Why the Battle for Medieval Studies Matters to America

It matters not only to America, but to our entire Western Graeco-Roman Catholic Civilisation and Culture!

An article about the attack on a sane university professor, a species in danger of extinction! As Chevalier Charles Coulombe has said, he's heard of the existence of 'modern scholars' (as opposed to 'scholars'), but he's never seen one.

From Dangerous

Standing at 5’5” and weighing barely 130 lbs — “Just say size eight,” she tells me during fact-checking — Professor Rachel Fulton Brown doesn’t look like the dangerous woman her critics describe. But she has become used to reading outlandish descriptions of herself since June 2015, when she published a blog post titled “Three Cheers For White Men,” effectively dropping a barrel of gunpowder into a burgeoning internecine war within Medieval Studies. Three years and hundreds of blog posts later, the tenured University of Chicago history professor is being casually referred to as a “fascist” at medievalist conferences, accused of inciting physical violence and rape against her peers, and avoided like a strumpet with bubonic plague. She has even been called out for bad language by Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Donna.

Fulton Brown’s blog post wasn’t, as her critics claim, a veiled defense of white nationalism, or anything like it. She was responding playfully to the “dead white male” trope in academia, gently pointing out that the wicked caucasian dudes of social justice folklore were responsible for, among other things, the development of chivalry, consensual marriage and, to some extent, the success of feminism itself. But her post went down like a cup of cold sick anyway. Dozens, later hundreds, of Fulton Brown’s colleagues declared war on her, incensed by her refusal to back down and apologize — and by the fact that she had blogged approvingly, a number of times, about a rising star in conservative media who was causing eruptions on campuses with his scathing commentary about the finger-wagging campus Left.

Fulton Brown was taken to task for refusing to acknowledge the problematic “whiteness” of her field and her responsibility as a Medieval Studies professor to “do something about it.” But a dozen senior professors interviewed for this story say something very specific and different is happening: an attempt to inject into the study of the Middle Ages the same far-Left identity politicking that has done so much damage to liberal arts departments. In the course of writing this story, I have interviewed scholars, journalists and authors, many of whom privately confided that Medieval Studies needed a Rachel Fulton Brown to draw a line in the sand, because, for the past half-decade, gender warriors and race scholars with axes to grind have been on a mission to change the field irreversibly.

Sympathetic, but hitherto silent, colleagues say the attempt to destroy Fulton Brown is part of a larger invasion into the discipline by activist academics, who see their role as arbiters of moral taste, determined to rid the field of infidels who refuse to bow to social justice. You’ve read stories before about academics at war over free speech with their own institutions. This is different. It’s the story of a professor who has taken on her entire academic field, with no backing whatsoever from the University of Chicago, an institution that prides itself on its commitment to free speech and academic freedom. What’s more, the crazy bitch might even win.

INQUISITION

It started gently, the waters tested with light mockery. But it quickly descended into an almost unprecedented attempt at academic sororicide. Fulton Brown, who maintains an enthusiastic online presence, was first ridiculed by snooty colleagues in academia for engaging with “random laypersons” through her blog and Facebook page, as though speaking to the public or explaining oneself in plain English was beneath the dignity of a serious historian. Fulton Brown appeared unfazed by this: within a week or two of the criticism appearing online, she was distributing “RANDOM LAYPERSON” t-shirts and mugs to readers of her blog. She is a product of Middle America’s tradition of educating girls, hailing from a four-generation long line of women who attended college in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas, and she says that’s the reason she feels an obligation to engage with regular folk outside the academy.

But then came the sinister name-calling, the associations with racism, and the repeated, direct assaults on her credentials and her standing in the field. Karl Steel, a medievalist at CUNY, remarked on Twitter that Fulton Brown probably wasn’t doing much peer reviewing any more, gloating about imagined damage done to her career by reckless allegations that he himself had helped to spread that Fulton Brown was consorting with “white nationalists,” and was condemned by association, according to tweets and emails seen by this magazine. Steel had been the one to christen her readers “random laypersons.” He did not respond to a request for comment. With every fresh round of allegations, Fulton Brown published a light-hearted rebuttal on her personal blog, “Fencing Bear At Prayer,” drenched in medieval references and good-natured humor. Months went by, and it wasn’t getting any better. The hits kept coming; Fulton Brown continued to smile and focus on her second monograph on the Virgin Mary. She appeared to be having fun, despite the appalling things said about her. But, privately, friends were worrying about the toll it was taking, and on the damage it might be doing to her career.

One of the principal architects of Fulton Brown’s annus horribilis was a then-unknown, untenured junior professor at Vassar College named Dorothy Kim. Kim had been goading Fulton Brown on social media for a year and a half, in an apparent attempt to get a rise out of the Chicago professor. Fulton Brown’s riposte, when it finally arrived in September 2017, politely but firmly refused to concede any ground, directing those anxious about medieval history being used to shore up white supremacy to “learn some fucking history.” Her post was decidedly light-hearted, as was its title: “How To Signal You Are Not A White Supremacist.”