Following up on my two earlier posts on the topic, Dr. Thio Li-ann, a professor at the National University of Singapore and a member of that country’s Parliament who graphically and stridently opposed the repeal of a law there that criminalizes sex between men, this week backed out of teaching a human rights course at NYU’s Law School in the fall:
In a statement released on Wednesday night, Richard L. Revesz, the N.Y.U. law school’s dean, said that Dr. Thio had changed her mind about teaching because of “the atmosphere of hostility by some members of our community towards her views and by the low enrollments in her classes.” As a result, “The law school will therefore cancel the course on ‘Human Rights in Asia’ and the seminar on ‘Constitutionalism in Asia,’ which she had been scheduled to teach.”
NYU OUTLaw, the law school’s gay group, has the student response from throughout the controversy on its blog. Singapore’s Electric New Paper News details Thio’s 18-point e-mail to NYU Law School dean defending herself before she withdrew. Above the Law has the full statement from Dean Richard Revesz. It reads in part:
The position taken in the speech should have been irrelevant to our evaluation of Professor Thio, although the argumentation supporting the position might properly have played a role in that evaluation.
Professor Thio’s position in that speech is inimical to the Law School’s position against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Nonetheless, I do not believe that Professor Thio’s opposition to our institutional position should have played any role in our evaluation of her. Leading academic institutions benefit greatly from a diversity of perspectives, not from hiring only people who share the same views.
At the same time, our evaluation of Professor Thio’s strength as a scholar might have been usefully informed by an assessment of the analytic cogency and methodological integrity of the arguments and evidence she marshaled for her position. It would be up to the individual faculty member to determine what, if any, weight to give to the speech to Parliament in judging her as a scholar.
The text of her speech is here, the video is on YouTube in three parts; here and here and here. What’s noteworthy about the Dean’s academese — if I can make it out — is that while what she said isn’t relevant the quality of her argument is.
Well, sure, I’m happy to split that hair.
If NYU Law had subjected the speech to some small fraction of the legal and academic rigor they have at their disposal, this whole brouhaha might have been prevented. What I saw in her speech was a strident, rambling, incoherent, assemblage of opinion all gussied up in academic regalia.
Her defensive playing of the victim card when students reasonably objected to her teaching human rights was equally weak. I have no idea how the withdrawal came about but beyond the online petition objecting to her appointment, students declined to sign up for her class.
As odious as I find her views, I think having her speak — not teach an entire course on human rights — may have provided insights of some real value.
Thanks, Holly!