L'Affaire Kaplan: Anatomy of an Academic Tragedy-A Colleague's Tale

Like many of us at the University of Wisconsin Law School, I have been enormously distressed, in all kinds of ways, by the controversy surrounding a class taught by my UW colleague, Len Kaplan, on February 15 of this year.

If anything, I have been even more distressed by the nature and quality of much of the reporting and public discussion of this event and its ongoing sequellae. There have been a few good journalistic accounts (links to be inserted once I learn how), following some initially sensationalistic, lazy, and lousy reporting. My colleague Ann Althouse has provided her strong and principled view of unfolding events on her popular blog and in her guest op-eds in the New York Times (links to come). I have agreed with many of the principles articulated by Ann, although not always with the balances she has struck or with some of her decisions about what to make public. I am by temperament more circumspect on such matters, and have struggled with how public to be in my own comments. That topic, of how to balance the demands of an intimate community with public responsibilities to speak out on matters of principle and public consequence, deserves further attention in its own right, and I will return to it in future postings.

What has most drawn my ire, and contributed to my increasing frustration and anger, are the largely anonymous postings on the varying blogs concerning this subject. The vast majority of these postings have been woefully ill-informed, and have shown little or no regard for listening to competing accounts or judging comments in the contexts in which they were made. Commitments to anything approaching due process, or even elementary fairness, have been conspicuous by their relative absence. Many postings have tried to fit these events into pre-existing narratives of victimization, or political correctness, which do not fit these circumstances. In a more complicated way, considerations of academic freedom have been invoked to justify statements that Professor Kaplan insists were not made, and that he would repudiate without hesitation had he made them. With a few very important exceptions (notably contributions by other students present in the Feb. 15 class who provided important context on what they perceive to have actually happened, and some former students of Professor Kaplan who have explained, in varying ways (my favorite: he is "bat-shit crazy", said in the nicest possible way), his pedagogic style and objectives), the discussion on the blogs has been a classic example of shedding (MUCH) more heat than light. In some respects, it has created a firestorm that has made reconciliation much more difficult.

I have been an outspoken contributor to internal faculty discussions on the situation. Thus far, I have done my best to keep my comments internal (excepting family and select friends). I have not served as a source to any of the reporters covering the story, and have not contributed postings, named or anonymous, to any of the blog discussion boards.

That changes now.

I have decided to begin commenting publicly on L'Affaire Kaplan on this site, to open an additional window (Ann Althouse's blog perceives events from a somewhat different vantage) on how this debate is unfolding within our law school. I do so in part because a valued colleague has been treated very shabbily, and in part because I think the issues are of considerable consequence for colleagues around the country, and for the exploration of sensitive and controversial issues in the classroom.

Whether I would do the same on behalf a colleague for whom I had lesser regard, or on behalf of ideas I considered despicable, is a hard question. As a matter of academic freedom against external attack, I would hope so (I've done so before), but cannot be absolutely certain. For a colleague who actually uttered the words falsely (I firmly believe) attributed to Professor Kaplan, properly reported in their pedagogic context as a deliberate attack on a vulnerable student or group in society, I doubt it (depending on the facts and context). That will have to be a matter for further introspection and subsequent posts.

How to go about this? I will begin by sharing some of my internal messages to my law school colleagues. These appear in edited form, to redact personally identifying matter related to particular colleagues, to clarify certain references for the benefit of a wider audience, to correct some infelicities of language and style, and, in some cases, to reduce the likelihood of my getting fired. I have mostly tried to resist the temptation to make myself appear wiser or more prescient than was true at the time.

I am withholding a number of communications of potential significance, and redacting portions of others, because I believe exposing them to a wider public at this juncture would be deleterious to the healing of my community.

I recognize that going public, even with the substantial qualifications and circumspection reflected above, will be obnoxious to some of my colleagues, and I regret that. But I believe, after much reflection and considerable struggle, that this is the proper course for me.