Lets get this clear! (Updated 2)
As I've already mentioned previously, you were allowed to ask for help from ANY member of staff. It clearly stated in the department's BA Philosophy handbook 2009-10 (and all subsequent years), under 'Personal Issues', section 5.2 (5.2.1-5.2.2) that students can go to "any members of the...academic staff...in professional confidence". And it's not surprising that as a gay woman I would prefer an empathic woman lecturer! And one I got on with, who isn't prejudiced, and who I was naturally drawn to and 'clicked' with from our very first meeting (the interview) when I wasn't yet a student at BBK, and one I feel at ease with! It's not something you can force or artificially produce, it either happens or it doesn't. We are very similar to one other. We understand each other. Like me, she's gender expansive and my kind of feminist. And no we weren't having a personal relationship, we didn't meet each other in private, and no we weren't having sex together or any physical relationship during my degree! And no I didn't write and/or send through the post or by email any love letters or poems or indeed, anything. In fact, I didn't email her after summer 2011 through to the end of my degree 2 years later. And I know she was fine about my emails up to that time because I asked her! So no-one can claim she had a problem with my emails. Unless someone was sending her fake emails from that fake college email I didn't set up and only found out about by accident, and/or fake letters to her home and signing my name to them. I'm genuinely sorry if that happened to her but it wasn't me. Also, my email wasn't completely private because I used my father's workplace computer to do things that required internet security both pre-college and during college. It was my father's idea and he was there too at the same time. However, what I didn't know was that because he had logged into his profile as part of switching the computer on, whichever computer we used that day stored all passwords to his profile, including my personal passwords I'd used in it. I was less tech-savvy back then and didn't change my passwords after using them on his workplace computer system. So, technically, it was possible for someone to access and use my email and/or profiles and pretend to be me. The only other times I emailed her was mainly around doing a PhD with her, nothing personal in the emails.
Yes, I heard the malicious rumours and chose to ignore them because they were untrue and deliberately provocative. I just wondered who was putting them up to it. And it was not just numerous outlandish hints, but some referred to her by name too. I didn't respond to any such comments. I didn't hear derogatory remarks about other female lecturers. So who on earth was behind the malicious gossip and the circulating of false ideas about her/us? I never talked about Susan James to anyone so clearly the gossip was pernicious and fabricated. Anything that we talked about stayed private. We both acted professionally at all times during my UG degree. To imply that Susan James was less than professional is beyond insulting. She was the most professional, ethical person in the whole college! Which makes such prejudice clear discrimination. She has been in higher education her whole adult life and, therefore, knows exactly what she can/cannot do and is very conscientious. She is a genuinely good person. Besides, as a lesbian, I am aware of how many assume that, if you are talking to another woman you have chosen to have something to do with, it must mean you are having sex with them. That attitude is called lesbophobia! And character assassination.
Indeed, denying us the chance to work together and constantly monitoring us was beyond inappropriate and unacceptable! What century is this? What country are we in? There was no good reason to treat two grown up, responsible women in this way. We had/have never worked together, she was never my tutor, didn't mark any of my work, and we did not have a personal relationship. However, we did get on very well together because we're on the same wavelength. Preventing people from working together is something the college doesn't allow. So how is it that the Master didn't uphold this policy? In our case it was blatant lesbophobia and sexist discrimination.
Susan James and I would have made a great team and could then have gone on after college to work together producing great research together and separately. That's exactly what male academics don't want because they feel threatened. They want to look like they are the clever ones, the only ones to produce good research. They don't want to compete for funding or for having their papers published in journals. Pathetic! One only has to look at stats to see the serious discrimination women, and especially gay women, experience when it comes to academic research.
I think we both deserve a chance to correct this injustice we suffered. Susan James was deprived of a job of supervising a Cavendish dissertation and supervising a very good student. I was deprived of a supervisor who understood me and was able to clock into my way of thinking. I would have learned a great deal and had an enthusiastic supervisor who was an expert in my research area of early modern history of philosophy, women philosophers, political/social philosophy, feminism and gender. We are both uniquely naturally suited.
Indeed, my second dissertation title also centred on feminist interpretation but this time the topics were: emotion, sympathy, empathy: she had written a book on emotions 'Passion and Action' which I had wanted to use in the dissertation but A. Price fitfully kicked out the emotion element during the dissertation consultation meeting so I couldn't include it, despite me having written it down in my dissertation outline document I had emailed him (6th July 2012, the morning of our afternoon consultation meeting). And I quote from my 'dissertation outline':
Under: "My stance/conclusion":
"Calm passions and reason enhance each other (virtuous character). I wish to argue that sympathy is/ functions as a calm passion"
And under: "Introduction... " I listed:
"....contemporary uses in feminist philosophy of Hume's passages on sympathy involving what we now term as empathy. "
"The passions /reason outlined"
"Calm passions"
For my full dissertation outline (2012) see my empathy blog or academia.edu, available under the Research tab on my academia website or at my profile link below:
Instead of Cavendish, this time I was focusing on Hume, a philosopher who was in her wheelhouse too having just delivered a paper on Hume and Spinoza at the Hume Conference 2011 which I attended and which I mention below.
People need to get over themselves and treat others with respect and stop trying to control everyone and everything. Young people go to uni only once in their life. They are there to learn and expect to be free to talk to anyone and everyone and not be limited to a narrow age band as my personal tutor would have it. I'm not ageist! But judging by his comment, it's no wonder that Susan James asked me if I prefer spending time with people my own age. I replied, not at all! The question did, however, suprise me. I don't have any age preferences. I already had, prior to my degree, a great deal of experience of studying with students across the generations, from my peer group up to the age of 80+, and she knew that because I'd mentioned that in the interview. So who planted that ageist nonsense into her head? 🤔🙄
Besides, if Boris Johnson, Richard (Dick) Van Dyke, Macron, and Vivienne Westwood can marry intergenerationally then it's fine for the rest of us to associate/marry intergenerationally. Not to forget famous same-sex marriages: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi; Marc Jacobs and Charly Defrancesco; Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black; Paul O'Grady and André Portasio; Elton John and David Furnish; Stephen Fry and Elliot Spencer (30 year age gap); Stephen Sondheim and Jeff Romley (50 year age gap).
University is meant to be a special experience both academically and socially. Students are not there to have a nightmare time, be monitored and harassed throughout even to the point of being prevented from attending extra classes to further their knowledge and from doing the research of their choice, something that is automatically guaranteed if there's someone who can undertake it! What happened to me was beyond unacceptable and inappropriate. It shouldn't happen to anyone especially not a young student. It's up to lecturers to provide a decent product and treat all students with respect. Students should expect to be able to choose their research topic and be given the best person. Not messed about over it to the extent that it would be easy for them to miss the deadline for the initial consultation supervision while the department tries to manoeuvre them, totally unnecessarily, into having a tutor they don't want on a subject they don't want to do! Then be given still another tutor who claims he's not interested in doing the second choice dissertation with me but has little choice about it. The feeling was mutual! However, I made the best of it.
Had I known what I know now that he was very close to a male philosopher (both from Balliol) who ran into Communist Czechoslovakia to lecture on something or other linked to Scruton's foundation and was arrested, I would have been furious. So, Susan James is switched for someone who has some very strange 'history' with (communist) Czechoslovakia (which no longer exists). Hence, he's completely the wrong dissertation supervisor in more ways than one! What does Communist Czechoslovakia have to do with me? I was born in the UK, have lived here all my life, have always been a British citizen and was very proud to play for the UK in my all too brief tennis career. No-one has the right to interfere with me simply because they interfered in a country that is part of my heritage. And why emphasise the Czech half of my background/ethnicity over the other, British half? Back off! You've all lost the plot! Clearly, then, the switch of supervisor was politically and religiously motivated which is something you expect in a communist country but not England in the 21st century. My mother didn't experience such a ridiculous situation at uni. Neither of us were even born in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic or ever held a Czech citizenship.
In addition, I also wanted Susan James as my PhD supervisor when the time came. (I made it clear I was aiming to go through up to and including PhD in my cover letter at the time of applying.) So I didn't want to jeopardise that by working together or having counselling from her (indeed she pointed me in the direction of the counselling service at BBK since, as she pointed out, academic philosophers will be of limited help [email from Susan James 24.3.2010]. I didn't go, it was revision time followed by exams and then nothing between May and October! Then during my second year, I encountered too much homophobia from staff in the wider college to want to ever use any BBK services!
I also didn't want to jeopardise being supervised by her by being involved in a personal relationship with her before graduating. And I'm sure she wouldn't countenance it either! I personally have no objection to lecturer/student relationships. After all, both are adults. Lecturers, unlike school teachers, are not in loco parentis! Therefore, there's a huge difference between school pupils and students elsewhere. One is not afraid of them or in awe of them or controlled by them as some right-wing people want to depict lecturer/student relationships. On the contrary, lecturers and students are equals. It's just that I preferred to keep the demarcation until no longer a student there. It's easier, less messy and fairer all round.
I also had already learnt what you can and cannot do when I was taught by private tutors prior to uni because my mother gave me the responsibility of hiring tutors for a given period of time. This was a relevant skill. Of course, I kept her informed and asked her advice. I didn't go off on a tangent. Which leads me to another point: I didn't have personal relationships with tutors during or after the tuition period was over. That would be icky. Paying someone and dating them simultaneously is a no-no! And afterwards? I was still a teenager so I hung out with fellow teenagers not tutors. Whilst on the subject, the language tutors were only hired for conversation/language skills practice. They were never responsible for the qualification I was working towards. I attended language classes at various colleges for that! And no, I have never had a personal relationship with a French or Spanish woman or even one who was French or Spanish speaking. Same goes for music tutors!
Anyway, the PhD reason is completely irrelevant now since I haven't been a student anywhere since summer 2013 (or ever consented to being an alumni anywhere where I have studied) and it's too late now to have her as a supervisor for a PhD thesis. So, it's a moot point. But I remain interested in getting together with her and working on any aspect of philosophy or anything else for that matter!
I already have a body of work/research in philosophy (5 books) that exceeds a PhD word count by a long way (according to that marker I'm half way through my third PhD given PhDs are 70,000 words long) and PhD content since it is all original, unsupervised work.
I've been working as an Independent Researcher in philosophy for 8 years now (end of this week)! Respect my research. The fact that I made it through peer review even at a top conference proves that I should have received a high first class degree. Trying to somehow diminish my successful research is just a sign of weakness, and lack of confidence in your own research. Professional devaluation is a known It's also a sign of jealousy and resentment. I think the philosophy community, and my college in particular, have caused enough damage. Time to back off and let me get on with my life, my research and my relationships with whomever, with no more adverse interference!
I also no longer belong to any philosophy societies as of January 2021 which is when my Hume Society membership expired. I've only ever attended one Hume Conference and that was back in 2011 in Edinburgh. It was a great conference which, unfortunately, was marred by Professor Susan James leaving it way too early and not returning. (She was there at the beginning of the conference, then she wasn't on the day before her paper, then left upset early in the week after presenting her paper). I have no idea why. I just recall seeing her leave looking upset. I was mid-conversation with a lecturer from somewhere or other but, on seeing her leave like that, I was concerned. I'd only just seen her talking to one of the organisers, the same one who wanted my conference notes and was looking at me sympathetically when we returned from the break. There was no reason to appear sympathetic. Nothing had happened. I'd asked Susan James if I could talk to her, she replied no in a very pleasant manner, so she didn't upset me and she was mid-conversation with said organiser who obviously heard me, so bad time to ask. Hence, I went off for my break assuming all was well. It wasn't a big deal. We never spoke to each other at conferences anyway because there never seemed to be a good time to do so. Conferences can be fast-paced so not easy to get the timing right. Rather silly because I chatted to others about their papers so it didn't make sense not to chat to her about her papers. But then again, maybe she didn't want someone making a big deal out of something so simple back at college. I get that!
One society, the Aristotelian, still hasn't sent me 2 copies of their Proceedings/Conferences for the year 2016-2017. I eventually received the 2015-16 ones. I was entitled to them because I paid extra to receive membership plus hardback copies for 2015-2017.
Comments
Post a Comment