Another win for a blacklisted professor
Music historian Timothy Jackson
Fight! Fight! Fight! After the public University of North Texas (UNT) blacklisted and dismissed professor Timothy Jackson in 2020 from his job as editor of the music history journal he founded for daring to express some academic conclusions the faculty and students didn’t like, he sued.
After a five year battle, Jackson and the university have now settled out of court, with the terms of the settlement [pdf] largely a big win for Jackson.
First the background: In 2019 woke music theorist Philip Ewell of Hunter College in New York gave a presentation to the Society of Music Theory where he claimed 19th century music theorist Heinrich Schenker was a “virulent racist” whose “racist views infected his music theoretical arguments.”
Jackson, who had devoted his career studying Schenker and had co-founded at the university the Journal of Schenkerian Studies focused expressly on Schenker’s works, knew this was patently untrue. For example, Schenker was also a Jew who was a victim of German anti-Semitism and lost many relatives in the Holocaust, facts that Ewell somehow did not think important to mention. To counter Ewell’s historical slanders, Jackson decided to dedicate the next issue of the journal to this issue, presenting essays from both sides. He even asked Ewell to write an essay.
Ewell did not respond. In Jackson’s own essay he outlined in detail the historical facts — as he knew them as an expert on this subject — that put the lie to Ewell’s claims. As Jackson noted, “Ewell peddled a ‘conspiracy theory’ that is ‘part and parcel of the much broader current of Black anti-semitism.'”
Instead of celebrating this perfect example of free speech, the university immediately moved to punish Jackson.
UNT launched an investigation, creating an “ad hoc” panel to look into the process that allowed the symposium issue of the journal to be published. On November 30, 2020, this ad hoc panel published a report criticizing the journal’s structure and the editorial and review process used for the symposium.
In response to the ad hoc panel’s report, department chair Benjamin Brand “informed Professor Jackson that he would be removed from the Journal and that the university would eliminate resources previously provided to the Journal and Center for Schenkerian Studies,”
As a result, the journal ceased publication in 2020, with that symposium issue banned from sight.
In addition, the university’s faculty and students began a slander campaign against Jackson.
Graduate students quickly condemned Professor Jackson for “racist actions” and various other derelictions that they claimed hurt their feelings. Calls for Professor Jackson to be fired quickly escalated, and the vast majority of Jackson’s fellow faculty members jumped on the bandwagon. Sixteen of them signed a graduate student petition calling for his ouster and for censorship of the Journal. Discovery revealed that at least one did so without even reading or understanding what the petition said.
Now for the just released settlement. Though the university and individuals named in the suit admit to no wrong-doing, the college agreed to pay Jackson $750,000, $400,000 of which goes to him directly with the rest to pay legal fees. The college also agreed to give Jackson his job back as editor of the journal, under strict rules designed to protect him from further blacklist campaigns by the university. The university is required to follow proper academic and ethical standards, not only in this journal but in all its publications. Those rules include creating an editorial board to work with Jackson, whose members are picked by Jackson himself.
If the university fails to live up to these rules in any of its publications, the entire deal is off.
The university also has to hire a student research assistant to assist Jackson in running the journal.
Most important, when Jackson is ready to publish the journal’s next issue, the banned symposium issue will be made available again.
The one negative of this deal is that the faculty and students who instigated the blacklist campaign get off without any consequences. It will be Texas taxpayers who pay Jackson, not the wrong-doers, who will still run the college and have a history of blacklisting and censorship, not just with Jackson. For example, in 2021 it fired a professor for daring to criticize flyers that warned faculty against triggering “microaggessions” in their conversations. In that case the university had to pay that professor $165,000 to settle.
The students at the school also remain decidedly totalitarian. In June 2022 the university student government passed a resolution demanding that the school blacklist any club that expresses any dissenting opinion about the queer agenda.
THEREFORE, LET IT BE RESOLVED THAT, any UNT Student Organization that engages in harassment, discrimination, hate crimes, and/or violation of UNT policy through transphobic posts, statements, and actions be immediately suspended to protect the mental, emotional, and physical health of transgender students at UNT. [emphasis mine]
It is not clear if this resolution is still in force. It is no longer available on the student affairs website.
Nor are these examples the only ones. The College Fix’s cancel culture database lists the stories above, but also four more. In every case, the faculty and students at the university took aggressive action to silence speech they did not agree with. Rather than debate, they attempted censorship (here), blacklisting (here), and even violence in two cases (here and here).
I can’t help wondering what the Texas legislature and Governor Greg Abbot think of all this. The University of North Texas gets significant funding from the state. Why have they not stepped in and demanded some changes there? And if the university still refuses, why are they still funding it?
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Music historian Timothy Jackson
Fight! Fight! Fight! After the public University of North Texas (UNT) blacklisted and dismissed professor Timothy Jackson in 2020 from his job as editor of the music history journal he founded for daring to express some academic conclusions the faculty and students didn’t like, he sued.
After a five year battle, Jackson and the university have now settled out of court, with the terms of the settlement [pdf] largely a big win for Jackson.
First the background: In 2019 woke music theorist Philip Ewell of Hunter College in New York gave a presentation to the Society of Music Theory where he claimed 19th century music theorist Heinrich Schenker was a “virulent racist” whose “racist views infected his music theoretical arguments.”
Jackson, who had devoted his career studying Schenker and had co-founded at the university the Journal of Schenkerian Studies focused expressly on Schenker’s works, knew this was patently untrue. For example, Schenker was also a Jew who was a victim of German anti-Semitism and lost many relatives in the Holocaust, facts that Ewell somehow did not think important to mention. To counter Ewell’s historical slanders, Jackson decided to dedicate the next issue of the journal to this issue, presenting essays from both sides. He even asked Ewell to write an essay.
Ewell did not respond. In Jackson’s own essay he outlined in detail the historical facts — as he knew them as an expert on this subject — that put the lie to Ewell’s claims. As Jackson noted, “Ewell peddled a ‘conspiracy theory’ that is ‘part and parcel of the much broader current of Black anti-semitism.'”
Instead of celebrating this perfect example of free speech, the university immediately moved to punish Jackson.
UNT launched an investigation, creating an “ad hoc” panel to look into the process that allowed the symposium issue of the journal to be published. On November 30, 2020, this ad hoc panel published a report criticizing the journal’s structure and the editorial and review process used for the symposium.
In response to the ad hoc panel’s report, department chair Benjamin Brand “informed Professor Jackson that he would be removed from the Journal and that the university would eliminate resources previously provided to the Journal and Center for Schenkerian Studies,”
As a result, the journal ceased publication in 2020, with that symposium issue banned from sight.
In addition, the university’s faculty and students began a slander campaign against Jackson.
Graduate students quickly condemned Professor Jackson for “racist actions” and various other derelictions that they claimed hurt their feelings. Calls for Professor Jackson to be fired quickly escalated, and the vast majority of Jackson’s fellow faculty members jumped on the bandwagon. Sixteen of them signed a graduate student petition calling for his ouster and for censorship of the Journal. Discovery revealed that at least one did so without even reading or understanding what the petition said.
Now for the just released settlement. Though the university and individuals named in the suit admit to no wrong-doing, the college agreed to pay Jackson $750,000, $400,000 of which goes to him directly with the rest to pay legal fees. The college also agreed to give Jackson his job back as editor of the journal, under strict rules designed to protect him from further blacklist campaigns by the university. The university is required to follow proper academic and ethical standards, not only in this journal but in all its publications. Those rules include creating an editorial board to work with Jackson, whose members are picked by Jackson himself.
If the university fails to live up to these rules in any of its publications, the entire deal is off.
The university also has to hire a student research assistant to assist Jackson in running the journal.
Most important, when Jackson is ready to publish the journal’s next issue, the banned symposium issue will be made available again.
The one negative of this deal is that the faculty and students who instigated the blacklist campaign get off without any consequences. It will be Texas taxpayers who pay Jackson, not the wrong-doers, who will still run the college and have a history of blacklisting and censorship, not just with Jackson. For example, in 2021 it fired a professor for daring to criticize flyers that warned faculty against triggering “microaggessions” in their conversations. In that case the university had to pay that professor $165,000 to settle.
The students at the school also remain decidedly totalitarian. In June 2022 the university student government passed a resolution demanding that the school blacklist any club that expresses any dissenting opinion about the queer agenda.
THEREFORE, LET IT BE RESOLVED THAT, any UNT Student Organization that engages in harassment, discrimination, hate crimes, and/or violation of UNT policy through transphobic posts, statements, and actions be immediately suspended to protect the mental, emotional, and physical health of transgender students at UNT. [emphasis mine]
It is not clear if this resolution is still in force. It is no longer available on the student affairs website.
Nor are these examples the only ones. The College Fix’s cancel culture database lists the stories above, but also four more. In every case, the faculty and students at the university took aggressive action to silence speech they did not agree with. Rather than debate, they attempted censorship (here), blacklisting (here), and even violence in two cases (here and here).
I can’t help wondering what the Texas legislature and Governor Greg Abbot think of all this. The University of North Texas gets significant funding from the state. Why have they not stepped in and demanded some changes there? And if the university still refuses, why are they still funding it?
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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