RUTHFULLY YOURS

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1952, Eve A. Browning received her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, in 1979. After teaching for three years at Ohio State University and a year at the University of Denver, she spent three decades on the faculty of the University of Minnesota at Duluth. Three years ago she left Duluth for the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she now chairs the Department of Philosophy and Classics. She has two academic books to her name, both published in 1992: one, co-edited by her, is about “feminist ethics,” and the other, written by her, is about “feminist criticism.” She’s published scholarly papers in such journals as the University of Dayton Review and reviewed books for the Women’s Studies Review and Women’s Review of Books.

It’s not a stellar CV, to put it mildly. Then again, over the years Browning has participated in conferences with titles that include the words “ethics” and “moral complexity” and “extreme vice” and “liberty and virtue” and “liberty and moral decline” and “character formation” and “modern freedom.” So you might expect that she’s actually devoted some serious thought to these topics.

In September of last year, however, Browning had a meeting with a graduate student that raises sobering questions about the extent and depth of her reflection on these matters. The student was Alfred MacDonald, who at the time of the meeting had been studying philosophy at UTSA for about two months; Browning, in her capacity as department chair (he wasn’t taking a class with her), had summoned him to her office for a discussion. About what? She wouldn’t say. Her caginess on this point, and her unwillingness to handle the matter by e-mail, raised MacDonald’s suspicions, and so he clandestinely taped their conversation, which in the state of Texas is legal. He posted the tape on YouTube, which took it down after Browning complained; the complete tape is now available here, with a shorter version here. There’s also an online transcript of their exchange.

These videos and transcript are representative documents of our times.

After mentioning that MacDonald had missed a couple of classes – an issue that he acknowledged and explained – Browning came round to what was plainly the real problem in her eyes: she’d been informed that in a conversation MacDonald had recently had between classes, “the topic of one student being engaged to a Muslim” had come up, “and it was alleged that you made offensive comments about Islam to that student.”

MacDonald admitted at once to having said to another student: “I don’t think highly of Islam because I am bisexual and could be legally put to death in about a dozen countries that use Islam for their legal system.” But not until he’d said this did his interlocutor reveal that her fiance was a Muslim. Whereupon, says MacDonald, “I repeatedly told the student ‘I’m sure he’s a great guy.’ She seemed pleasant as if nothing had gone wrong, and then reported this to the chair afterward.”

Hence the meeting with Browning, who, after being told by MacDonald what he had said to his fellow student about Islam, asked him: “Do you understand how someone would find that offensive?” Note well: Browning didn’t mean that the Islamic death penalty for gay people is offensive; she had nothing to say about that. What she meant was that mentioning the penalty is offensive.

She then professed to be puzzled by MacDonald’s reference to the Islamic death penalty:

EVE BROWNING: It’s a confusing comment to me because Muslims do not all live in countries in which bisexuals are executed. Muslims live in the United States –

ALFRED MACDONALD: Sure.

EVE BROWNING: – Muslims live in France, Muslims live in every country in the world – it’s the fastest growing world religion.

Needless to say, these facts were entirely irrelevant to MacDonald’s point about Islamic law – and Browning cannot possibly be stupid enough to have thought otherwise. But MacDonald agreed that they were, indeed, facts, and even volunteered that “one of my good friends at the university is Muslim.” But this didn’t win him any points with Browning, who asked: “And do you tell him that you object to his religion because there are places on earth where gay, lesbian and bisexual people are discriminated against, including your own country?”

This, of course, was a classic moral-equivalency ploy: hey, gays may be victims of “discrimination” in Iran and Saudi Arabia, but don’t forget that they also experience prejudice in the U.S.! MacDonald corrected Browning, informing her that his Muslim friend was a “her,” not a “him,” and reiterating that when it came to the treatment of gays in those Islamic countries, he wasn’t referring to mere discrimination but to execution. As he put it: “Death penalty’s pretty severe.”

But Browning couldn’t even be bothered to agree. Instead, she resumed her attack on him for being “offensive”:

EVE BROWNING: What does that have to do with her being engaged to a Muslim?

ALFRED MACDONALD: Nothing. I wasn’t talking about the engagement to the Muslim. I was talking about Islam in that particular moment.

EVE BROWNING: Well, let me just say that kind of thing is not going to be tolerated in our department. We’re not going to tolerate graduate students trying to make other graduate students feel terrible for our emotional attachments.

She then threatened to refer MacDonald to the university’s “Behavior Intervention Team,” which, she explained, is “trained on talking to people about what’s appropriate or what isn’t,” or to “the student conduct board,” which had the power to recommend his dismissal from the university. When MacDonald commented that he “thought that UTSA was a public university with first amendment protections” and expressed surprise that he could be kicked out for stating objective facts about Islam, Browning affirmed that this was indeed the case, and that the chief objective of her conversation with him was to try to “inculcate” in him “professional standards and performance and behavior” – because when anyone deviates from these standards, “students are intimidated; they don’t learn well, they aren’t happy, they don’t flourish, they leave the program.”

Browning then repeated these points at some length, saying that “confrontational interaction with other graduate students is objectionable and unprofessional,” that MacDonald’s Islam comment had been “very objectionable,” that “if you do behave objectionably…you’re not being a constructive member of the community,” and so on. When MacDonald tried to push back against her characterization of his Islam remark, she complained: “You’re clearly expressing a lot of resistance to what I’m telling you.” And she told him that if he were working under her in an office environment, his Islam comment “would get you fired.” CONTINUE AT SITE