Bulletin N° 942
Subject: A request in support of Academic
Freedom and a warning against Polulation Control.
Grenoble, December 11, 2020
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Please find below a copy of my open letter to Dr. Mark Crispin
Miller, Professor of Communications at NYU who is embroiled in a battle for
academic freedom at the institution where he has taught for the past 20 years.
(Also, please see the Appendix at the bottom of this page containing two documents
from Professor Miller which further elucidate his struggle to preserve free
speech and independent research at New York University.)
The second item below is a report by James Corbett on the history
of behavioral science and the theories and practices of population control that
have been recorded and gathered and are now being put in place, under the
pretext of political necessity in response to the “Covid-19 pandemic.”
Sincerely,
Francis
McCollum Feeley
--
Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur des
Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
http://www.ceimsa.org
1)
December
11, 2020
Dear Professor
Miller,
Thank you for
the information about the conflict that has arisen in your Department of Media, Culture, and Communications at NYU’s
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, Human Development at NYU and the repressive
measures being assembled to silence you. No one to my knowledge contests the
fact that you are an unusually productive intellectual, and that you provide
information and analyses that otherwise would be lost to large numbers of
people. Your collective work – which includes frequent public talks published
on You Tube and elsewhere, articles published on your own website, News From Underground, and of
course your many books and articles – has made significant contributions to
public discussions on a variety of important issues. The pedagogy that you
practice in the classroom, by reliable accounts, is truly exemplary,
encouraging students to develop a problematic and to formulate research methods
and conduct independent research and critical thinking that will produce
original insights and new understandings instead of indoctrination through
repetition of received ideas, as is so often the case in “higher education”
classes.
I have included
with this email the two documents you shared with me, to encourage CEIMSA
readers to become familiar with your case and, if they are so moved, join in
your defense and the defense of Academic Freedom by writing, as you have suggested,
an email expressing their concerns to NYU President, Andrew Hamilton, urging
him to intervene in this departmental affair with a (polite) message:
Dr. Andrew
Hamilton
Office of the
President
New York
University
70 Washington
Square South
New York, NY
10012
andrew.hamilton@nyu.edu, and nyu558@nyu.edu,
and in addition
sending a CC. of this mail to Provost Katherine Fleming at: kef1@nyu.edu,
as well as sending
by BCC a copy of the same mail to you at: nfu@simplelists.com.
With
these letters and their copies circulating at NYU, we can only hope that your
colleagues and administrators will be put on notice that this issue
reaches far beyond the Department of Media, Culture, and Communications at
NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education,
Human Development and your academic community; it concerns all teachers
and students who have a vested interest in Academic Freedom for future
generations in the United States and beyond.
And to close,
here, for CEIMSA readers, is the link you sent me that contains your radio
interview of December 9 on WABC Radio with Frank Morano,
in which you discuss your case at NYU: Controversy,
Crony Capitalism & COVID. (Interview starts
at 00:24:00)
best wishes,
Francis Feeley
2)
« Mouse
Utopia and The Blackest Pill – #PropagandaWatch”
– with James Corbett.
(48:51)
Published December 8, 2020
Appendix:
a)
Faculty Petition on
Oct. 21 against Professor Mark Crispin Miller.
October
21, 2020
To:
Dean Jack Knott and Provost Katherine Fleming
We,
the undersigned faculty in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
affirm the values of academic freedom. As faculty in a department that shares
and fosters a deep value of critical thinking and analysis, we believe in the
principles of discourse, debate, and consensus building. We also affirm that
our role as professors in the classroom is above all to foster student
engagement, analysis, and inquiry, and we are committed to maintaining the
health, safety, and learning opportunities of MCC students and staff.
Professor
Mark Crispin Miller is currently circulating a petition accusing our department
of violating his academic freedom and conducting an email campaign against the
department. Over the years, many of us have been distressed and concerned over
the positions that Professor Miller has espoused on his highly visible website,
where he prominently displays his title as a full tenured professor in our
department. These positions include characterization of transgender surgery as
a eugenic form of sterilization, direct mockery and ridicule of trans individuals, and denial of the Sandy Hook elementary
school shooting. No matter how damaging these positions may be to the
reputation of our department, Professor Miller has the right to his opinions.
Academic freedom and freedom of speech are rights that we must uphold.
However,
a defense of academic freedom is no excuse where Professor Miller’s behavior
constitutes discrimination, attacks against students and others in our
community, or advocacy for an unsafe learning environment. For several years,
students have complained regularly about Professor Miller’s conduct in the
classroom and the way in which he engages discussion around controversial views
and non-evidence based arguments. In all cases the response of NYU leadership
has been to state that the Office of General Council is aware and to tell
students and faculty to file a bias complaint. Yet even when
complaints have been filed (and many have been) to NYU’s bias review boards,
the Office of Equal Opportunity, and to school leaders, the situation has not
changed or improved.
Recently
on his public blog and on social media platforms, Professor Miller attacked a
student who publicly objected to his criticism of mask usage in an in-classroom
setting, and used his position of authority to intimidate students who choose
to wear masks and abide by NYU policy, New York State law, and CDC guidelines.
Professor Miller went on to repeatedly name and identify the contact
information of this student, opening an opportunity for cyberbullying
and threatening communication directed toward the student, which subsequently
occurred and continues.
We
do not condone nor will we tolerate intimidation of students, staff, and
colleagues. We support our students, staff, and colleagues who choose to wear
masks and follow NYU health protocols and New York 10/28/2020 New York
University Mail - Letter from MCC Faculty
State
law.
We support the queer, transgender, and non-binary members of the NYU community.
We support those in our community who are Black and Indigenous, people of
color, and immigrants, and who come from marginalized and historically
underrepresented communities, particularly those who have been targets of
ongoing and systemic racism and violence. We unequivocally condemn white
supremacy, anti-trans/non-binary bias, and any hate speech.
We
call on Steinhardt and University leadership to publicly support the NYU
community and undertake an expedited review, as per the Faculty Handbook and
Title IV, of Professor Miller’s intimidation tactics, abuses of authority,
aggressions and microaggressions, and explicit hate speech,
none of which are excused by academic freedom and First Amendment protections.
If your review substantiates our claims, we ask that you publicly condemn his
actions and take whatever further disciplinary measures are deemed appropriate.
It is unacceptable to remain silent in the face of ongoing harm to our
students. Further, we call upon the administration to establish stronger
protocols and policies to protect students, staff, and nontenured
faculty members from intimidation and harm.
Signed,
Arjun Appadurai,
Paulette Goddard Professor Deborah J. Borisoff,
Professor
Stephen
Duncombe, Professor Allen Feldman, Professor
Alexander
R. Galloway, Professor
Lisa Gitelman, Professor
Radha S. Hegde, Professor
Nicholas
Mirzoeff, Professor
Susan
Murray, Professor
Arvind Rajagopal,
Professor
Marita Sturken,
Professor Aurora Wallace, Clinical Professor
Jamie
Skye Bianco, Clinical Associate Professor
Paula
Chakravartty, Associate Professor
Brett
Gary, Associate Professor
Ted
Magder, Associate Professor
Mara
Mills, Associate Professor Juan Piñón, Associate
Professor
Natasha
Schüll, Associate Professor
Nicole
Starosielski, Associate Professor
Isra Ali, Clinical
Assistant Professor
Laine Nooney,
Assistant Professor
Whitney
(Whit) Pow, Assistant
Professor
j. Siguru Wahutu,
Assistant Professor Angela Xiao
Wu, Assistant Professor
b)
Response by Professor
Mark Crispin Miller on Nov. 10 to the faculty petition against him.
NYU Steinhardt
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, Human Development
Department
of Media, Culture, and Communications
Nov. 10, 2020
Dear colleagues,
I write to you, on the
advice of counsel, about your letter of Oct. 21, 2020, demanding that Dean
Knott order "an expedited review" of my long record of
"intimidation tactics, abuses of authority, aggressions and microaggressions, and explicit hate speech," so as to
determine whether "disciplinary measures" may be necessary. Since you
argue that such brutal conduct nullifies my academic freedom, your letter is
essentially a bid to have me fired.
In my own defense,
therefore, I write to tell you that your letter is demonstrably untrue in
nearly all its factual claims, and misleading in its various insinuations. Your
characterization of my "conduct," in the classroom and online, is so
starkly, and provably, at variance with reality that I think "pack of
lies" would be appropriate, unless the untruths in your letter are not
conscious falsehoods but delusions. In any case, I'm writing to refute your
letter in detail, and urge you to retract it, for your own sakes as well as
mine.
As I imply above, some
few of your factual claims are true, and I will start with them. I do have
"a highly visible website," it does note my affiliation with the
university (though not as "prominently" as you suggest, since one
must click on "About" to notice it), and I have taken various
positions there. That's it. All your other factual claims are false. While I
have circulated a petition, it does not "accus[e] the department of violating [my] academic
freedom," but accuses NYU of doing so; and I am not "conducting an
email campaign against the department." Like the petition, all my emails
on the subject focus on NYU's violation of
my academic freedom, nor do any of them take a stand "against" MCC (or,
for that matter, NYU).
I turn now to the
episode that started this ordeal, and your distorted version of it:
"Recently on his
public blog and social media platforms, Professor Miller attacked a student who
publicly objected to his criticism of mask usage in an in-classroom setting [sic],
and used his position of authority to intimidate students who choose to wear
masks and abide by NYU policy, New York State law, and CDC
guidelines."
First of all, I
certainly did not "intimidate students who choose to wear masks,"
nor, in that class, did I offer "criticism of mask usage." What I did
do was encourage the class to read the scientific studies—eight randomized,
controlled trials, conducted among health professionals over the last 15 years
or so—finding that masks are ineffective against transmission of respiratory
viruses. I also urged them to read more recent studies finding
otherwise (the sort urged on my students by Dean Knott and Dr. Ciotoli), and offered guidance as to how to judge their
soundness. In making that suggestion, I very clearly said that "I am not telling
you not to wear masks"—that this was an intellectual exercise: an example
of the kind of independent study that one must undertake to test the claims of
any propaganda drive. I therefore "intimidate[d]" no one in that
class, nor, though my own view of the mask mandates is highly
critical (as I have studied it in depth), in class I did not push my view, but
urged the students to look into it themselves, and make up their own minds—as I
do in all my propaganda classes.
(Let me add, for your
enlightenment, that the "CDC guidelines" that you regard as gospel
truth abruptly changed in early April, the CDC, and Dr. Fauci,
having, until then, echoed the consensus of the RCT's that I encouraged my
students to examine; and that the WHO did likewise, until early June, when they
too pivoted dramatically—for a given reason different from the one that Dr. Fauci offered for his turnaround. Such
facts are highly relevant to any careful inquiry into this matter—the sort of
inquiry I urge my students to attempt, and that your letter casts as heresy. As
for your obeisance to "New York State law," let me add also that
there is, a s of this writing, no such law, but just a
set of guidelines from the governor.)
Moreover, that I
"attacked a student who publicly objected to [my] criticism of mask
usage" is also wholly false—an absolute inversion of the truth: i.e., that
the student attacked me, on Twitter, demanding that NYU fire me.
The student didn't say a word throughout the class discussion that so angered
her (although I solicit argument in class), nor, clearly, did she bother
reading any of those studies, but, after (by her own account) calling NYU's
bias hotline to complain, took to Twitter to denounce not just what I had urged
in class but several pieces noted on my website, treating them as
self-evidently false, and, therefore, further grounds for my dismissal. How,
and where, and when, I "attacked" her your letter fails to specify—as it could
not, because I never did.
"Professor Miller
went on to repeatedly name and identify the contact information of this
student, opening an opportunity for cyberbullying and
threatening communication toward the student, which subsequently occurred and
continues."
This too is completely
false. In my various responses to and observations on that uproar, I never
named Ms. Jackson, nor did I ever "identify [her] contact
information." It being Twitter, after all, she (obviously) named herself, and
(obviously) posted her own contact information; and—it being
Twitter—her tweets provoked attacks by others, which had nothing to do with me.
(Her tweets also provoked attacks on me, as well as three media
hit-pieces, by writers who didn't bother interviewing me.) My petition
necessarily includes her tweet demanding that NYU fire me, as any full account
of what transpired must do. That's the only time I've named her publicly,
though her name did come up in one comment on the controversy, by a member of
my list-serve, which I posted on my website, and which does not include her
"contact information." That's it. To cast me as
the aggressor in this case is as perverse as your
accusing me of having attacked MCC, most of whose faculty are now
attacking me at least
as fiercely as more fiercely as Ms. Jackson did.
I turn now to your
claims about the postings on my website. Nowhere on that site is there a single
mention of Sandy Hook, nor have I ever publicly
"denied" it. That subject has come up precisely twice in my propaganda
classes, once when a student in my undergraduate propaganda class did her
report on it, at her request. The single time I brought it up was in my MA
propaganda course last year, during (if I remember right) the class discussion
following the group of class reports on propaganda, pro and con, over gun
control. In relation to the Parkland shooting, I mentioned that there is some
troublingly compelling scholarship on Sandy Hook, and recommended it to anyone
who might be interested in knowing more about it. My view is that we cannot
simply rule out any argument that deviates from the official
story, however outlandish it may seem, without first looking into it (unless
it's physically impossible, like flat-earth speculation, or the claim that NASA
runs a child-sex-slave colony on Mars). My students learn to check their
impulse to dismiss alternative views and/or theories just because they sound
unlikely on their face (which is to say, just because they'd rather not believe
them), and to investigate them before deeming them impossible—a scientific
attitude, and one on which a firm grasp of reality depends.
This brings me to the
burden of your letter, which veers far beyond the crime of my in-class
suggestion that the students read those scientific studies, to the sweeping charge
that I'm a hateful, domineering crackpot—an image based on further falsehood,
and a gross distortion of my views (as expressed not in the classroom, but
online).
Nowhere on my website,
or anywhere else, have I engaged in "direct mockery and ridicule of
transgender individuals." That charge of transphobia
was reviewed already by the OEO, earlier this year, after Nicole reported me
for three brief online writings (that another colleague, unidentified, conveyed
to her); and I was quickly exculpated (a clearance that you seem to find as
heinous as Ms. Jackson found the OEO's failure to act promptly on her
grievance). As I told the lawyers who questioned me, my writings on the subject
of transgenderism are in no way expressions of some
animus against "transgender individuals," but highly critical of
transgender ideology, and its troubling real-world consequences:
e.g., biological males competing in girls' and women's sports, or forcing
admission to women's shelters and women's prisons—trends that I oppose on
feminist grounds—and radical medical intervention in the sexual development of
children, which I see as an egregious practice, violating informed consent (I'm
on the board of the Alliance for Human Research Protection), and subjecting children
to hormone therapies with drastic side effects, and even surgery, whose effects
are irreversible. I oppose that just as strongly as I do conversion therapy—a
position that's not hateful in the least: on the contrary. That
transgender ideology has been aggressively promoted all
throughout the corporate media, and backed by very powerful institutions, state
and corporate (and with some funding by the likes of certain multibillionaires
with large investments in Big Pharma), tells us that
it's driven not by some elite commitment to "inclusion
and diversity," but for other purposes—possibly eugenic purposes among
them, as I note in that brief piece that you all find outrageous on its face,
and am pursuing in further research on the subject of eugenics nowadays
(rebranded, since the Holocaust, as "population reduction").
My own ready
acceptance of "transgender individuals" as equals, whose rights and
freedoms I unreservedly respect, is clear from my email exchange, last year,
with Whitney Pow, when I
learned they had decided to join the faculty. I wrote to welcome them, and we
had a pleasant back-and-forth, ending with my recommending a book that I
thought might be relevant to their research. This alone should make clear to
any fair-minded person that I cannot be tagged as "transphobic"
(and also makes me sorry that Whitney signed your letter, though I understand
why she may have felt obliged).
In any case, whatever
you may think of my critique of the transgender ideology—which we in
academia should be able to discuss in depth, impartially,
without reprisal—it provides no basis whatsoever for your wild insinuations
that I'm given, in my classes, to ""intimidation tactics,
abuses of authority, aggressions and microaggressions,
and explicit hate speech," that I've somehow advocated "for
an unsafe learning environment," and carried out "attacks on students
and others in our community," including "staff and colleagues."
While I've been highly critical of the administration, and NYU's Board of
Trustees, for predatory practices in general, and "NYU 2031" in
particular, and have been actively involved in efforts to expose those
practices, for the good of the whole faculty, the students, and—therefore—the
university itself (a record that the younger ones among you might explore), I
never have, in any way, attacked a student, staff member or colleague here, or
anywhere else I've taught since I earned my PhD in 1977; and so your claims
that I have done so are indefensible (as many students, former and current, and
other witnesses, are affirming in their letters to the
dean).
Let me close by noting
that, if any member of this faculty has been attacked, it is myself,
and not only this year. As I informed the provost, and, at her suggestion, the
OEO some weeks ago, after this mask controversy had blown up, and NYU sided
against me, I've felt for some time, but especially this semester, that I'm in
a hostile work environment. I've been told over the years, in confidence, by
students, that some of you have disparaged me in private, and even warned them
not to work with me. Those accounts, and some other things, have been duly
noted by the OEO, which now has a record of my concerns, and their basis in
reality—concerns that have now been bluntly vindicated by your groundless and
malicious letter.
In light of all the
untruths in that letter, whether they be conscious
lies or fantasies, I ask that you now retract it, and issue an apology, so that
the dean's review may end.
Mark Crispin Miller