Research Interests
I want to know how people think. I am particularly interested in “high-level cognition,” such as how people understand whole stories, and solve complex problems. I particularly want to know how the brain thinks. All research on the brain and on thinking or perceiving, without regard to the brain, is interesting and useful. But I find it particularly satisfying to try to link the brain’s wetware to the mind’s software. Not just for the sake of connecting the mental realm to the physical, but because evidence from each domain helps constrain theories in the other, hopefully providing novel insights into both. Which brings me to my research…
Eyewitness to a Title IX Witch Trial
She did however conclude, splitting hairs with the impunity of a papal inquisitor, that while Ludlow may not have forced Hartley into a relationship, he did manipulate her into one. This was the essence of her case against him, despite the fact that the relationship hadn’t violated any university codes.
.. When I eventually read the two reports, I found them shocking. At every turn, speculation and guesswork became the basis for establishing “a preponderance of evidence,” the standard demanded by the Office for Civil Rights in Title IX cases. The reasoning was frequently ludicrous. Potentially exculpatory evidence from Ludlow was ignored. And the gender bias was incredible — exhausted clichés about predatory males and eternally innocent females were apparently sufficient grounds to convene this massive show trial.
.. Though it was staged as an actual trial, both of Ludlow’s accusers had declined to participate, meaning there was no opportunity for his lawyer to question their stories, meaning the whole thing was, judicially speaking, an elaborate sham.
.. But however rickety their case, I could see why the university needed Ludlow to go away. For one thing, he’d become a public-relations nightmare. When student activists staged a protest about the university’s handling of sexual-misconduct cases (namely Cho’s), they did it, cannily, at the kickoff for a $3.75-billion university fund-raising campaign
.. a feminist philosopher at the University of Toronto named Jessica Wilson, had volunteered to testify as a character witness for Peter Ludlow.
.. But however rickety their case, I could see why the university needed Ludlow to go away. For one thing, he’d become a public-relations nightmare. When student activists staged a protest about the university’s handling of sexual-misconduct cases (namely Cho’s), they did it, cannily, at the kickoff for a $3.75-billion university fund-raising campaign
.. Ludlow told me he was thinking of pulling the plug and resigning. As his faculty adviser, I advised him against it, but he didn’t foresee a positive outcome; also he was bleeding money on lawyers who were no match for the university’s, numerically or otherwise.
.. There had also been an ugly exchange with the faculty panel’s counsel, who could be exceedingly unpleasant, at one point chewing Ludlow out so viciously (over whether he could switch counsel midway through the proceedings) that he was reduced nearly to tears in front of a roomful of people. I’d never seen anything like it in all my years in academe, and it’s not like academic aggression is unknown.
.. Also, she’d had an epiphany: Northwestern hadn’t operated or conducted itself in good faith, and its “inner machinations” had been driven by a singular motive: protection and preservation of the institution at all costs.
.. To call this letter convoluted is an understatement, since if the findings in her case had been faulty, the fault lay in Northwestern’s Title IX officer believing Cho’s story. Besides, I had a hard time grasping what Cho could possibly hold Northwestern responsible for. As far as I could see, the university had merely tried to stay in compliance with the incoherent directives on Title IX issued by the Education Department, even if that meant trying to fire a professor by using as evidence the statements of a student who’d already cast doubt on the reliability of her own statements.
.. It’s an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of just how haphazard and, frankly, incompetent the kangaroo-court system that reigns on American campuses can be. Reading through it was appalling, and believe me, I’m not unjaded when it comes to institutional power.
.. Personally, I don’t think he abused his power. The problem was that he didn’t share the conception of power in vogue in academic precincts. Yes, Ludlow was guilty — though not of what the university charged him with. His crime was thinking that women over the age of consent have sexual agency, which has lately become a heretical view on campus, despite once being a crucial feminist position. Of course the community had to expel him. That’s what you do with heretics.