Philosopher: Missed Class to Get an Abortion? Not Excused.

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Justin Weinberg

. May 30, 2024 at 11:08 am 138

A philosophy professor and a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin have joined with the state in a lawsuit against the Federal government, particularly the US Department of Education’s “Final Rule” regarding the interpretation of Title IX, which aims to prevent “discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”

Daniel Bonevac & John Hatfield

The professors are Daniel Bonevac and John Hatfield.

The lawsuitsays that with the Final Rule the Federal government oversteps its authority by requiring “students and teachers to, for example, use someone’s ‘preferred pronouns'” and by “reinterpreting the word ‘sex’ to include ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity.'” It also aims to protect the plaintiffs’ rights to treat student absences from class for the purposes of getting an abortion as unexcused, to regulate the clothing their teaching assistants wear, and to decline to hire as teaching assistants students who have received abortion pharmaceuticals in the mail.

In a section of the lawsuit (reproduced below), Professors Bonevac and Hatfield describe ways they plan to behave that they believe are rendered illegal by the Final Rule interpretation of Title IX—hence the lawsuit. These include:

Not honoring any student’s demands to be addressed by the singular pronoun “they”. (“I will not violate the rules of grammar or make a fool of myself to accommodate a student’s delusional beliefs.”)
Not allowing his teaching assistants to teach or otherwise interact with students while wearing clothing traditionally not associated with their genders.
Not treating absences to obtain an “illegal abortion” or “purely elective abortion” as an excused absence. (Note that in Texas, abortions are generally illegal with few exceptions.)
Not knowingly hiring teaching assistants who have received shipments of “abortion pills and abortion-related paraphernalia”.

Here’s the full text of Professor Bonevac’s declaration (Professor Hatfield’s is the same):

I, Daniel A. Bonevac, declare as follows:

1. I am over 18 years old and fully competent to make this declaration.
2. I have personal knowledge of the facts stated in this declaration, and all of these facts are true and correct.
3. I am a named plaintiff in this litigation.
4. I am a professor of philosophy of the University of Texas at Austin. The University of Texas at Austin is subject to Title IX and its prohibition on “sex” discrimination. As a professor at UT-Austin, I am also subject to the requirements of Title IX in my capacity as an educator and scholar.
5. I have no intention of complying with the Biden Administration’s recently announced Title IX edict, which has nothing to do with “sex” discrimination and represents nothing more than an attempt to force every educator in the United States to conform to a highly contentious interpretation of gender ideology and abortion rights.
6. The new Title IX rule purports to define “discrimination on the basis of sex” to include “discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” See 34 C.F.R. § 106.10.
7. The new Title IX rule also purports to define “pregnancy or related conditions” to include abortion. See 34 C.F.R. § 106.2 (“Pregnancy or related conditions means . . . Pregnancy, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, or lactation”). It requires professors to accommodate student absences from class to obtain abortions—including illegal abortions and purely elective abortions that are not medically required. See 34 C.F.R. § 106.40(b)(3)(ii)(C); 34 C.F.R. § 106.40(b)(3)(iv); see also 34 C.F.R. § 106.40(b)(6)(vi)(4) (“[A] recipient must treat pregnancy or related conditions in the same manner and under the same policies as any other temporary medical conditions”).
8. There are at least four ways in which I will not comply with the Biden Administration’s Title IX rule.
9. First. I will not honor any student’s demands to be addressed by the singular pronoun “they”—regardless of whether those demands come from a biological man or a biological woman, and regardless of whether the person making those demands identifies with a gender that matches or departs from his biologically assigned sex. “They” is a plural pronoun, and it is ungrammatical to use a plural pronoun to refer to a single person. I will not violate the rules of grammar or make a fool of myself to accommodate a student’s delusional beliefs. Nor will I honor demands to use other “made-up” pronouns that are not a standard part of the English language. This is not “sex” discrimination of any sort, even under Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020), because I will enforce this policy equally against male and female students. See id. at 660 (“Take an employer who fires a female employee for tardiness or incompetence or simply supporting the wrong sports team. Assuming the employer would not have tolerated the same trait in a man, Title VII stands silent.”).
10. Second. I will not knowingly permit my teaching assistants to engage in cross-dressing while teaching my classes or interacting with my students. My teaching assistants—both male and female—must wear professional attire while on the job, and I will not allow a male teaching assistant to wear a dress or high heals or any type of drag attire while working for me. Although I am not opposed to hiring a crossdresser or transvestite as a teaching assistant, they must refrain from this behavior while on the job and when interacting with my students in any way.
11. Third. I will not knowingly treat an absence from class to obtain an illegal abortion or a purely elective abortion as an excused absence. The law of Texas has outlawed and criminalized abortion in all circ*mstances unless the mother’s life is in danger. See Tex. Health & Safety Code § 170A.002(a). And federal law imposes criminal liability on any person who obtains abortion drugs through the mail, or from an express company or common carrier or through an interactive computer service— including pregnant women who obtain these pills for use in a self-managed abortion. See 18 U.S.C. § 1461–1462. I will not accommodate or become complicit in these crimes by excusing a student’s absence from class if that student skips class to obtain an illegal abortion in Texas, or to perform a self-managed abortion with illegally obtained abortion drugs.
12. Nor will I knowingly excuse a student’s absence from class if that student leaves the state to obtain a purely elective abortion. I will certainly accommodate students who are seeking medically necessary abortions in response to a pregnancy that threatens the student’s life or health. But I will not accommodate a purely elective abortion that serves only to kill an unborn child that was conceived through an act of voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse. Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not “health care” or “medical treatment” of any sort. They are purely elective procedures, and I will not accommodate an act of violence against the most vulnerable and defenseless members of the human family.
13. Fourth. I expect my teaching assistants to obey and respect the laws of Texas and the laws of the United States, so I will not knowingly hire a teaching assistant who has violated the abortion laws of Texas or the federal-law prohibitions on the shipment or receipt of abortion pills and abortion-related paraphernalia. See 18 U.S.C. § 1461–1462. The Title IX rule purports to ban “discrimination” against anyone who has had an abortion, even if the abortion was illegal and even if the woman violated or aided or abetted violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1461–1462 to obtain the abortion. But I do not hire criminals or lawbreakers to serve as teaching assistants, and I will not comply with this concocted non-discrimination rule.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the facts stated in this declaration are true and correct.

You can see the whole lawsuit here.

UDPATE:Quite understandably, I’m seeing a lot of vitriol in the comments on this post. Comments are moderated, and I would ask commenters to reacquaint themselves with the Comments Policy. I’m sure you can make your points effectively without, for example, name calling, etc. Thank you.

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Fritz Allhoff

9 days ago

Wow.

Marc Champagne

Reply toFritz Allhoff

8 days ago

Anyone wishing to get beyond the incredulous stare to a study of REASONS should look at Bonevac’s arguments for “civilizational consequentialism” given in the collection on Dissident Philosophers reviewed here: https://quillette.com/2022/03/30/dissident-philosophers-a-review/

Last edited 8 days ago by Marc Champagne

Michel

Reply toMarc Champagne

8 days ago

I think I’ll respond to my students’ ChatGPT-generated discussion posts instead, thanks.

Wowee Zowee

Reply toMarc Champagne

8 days ago

Not considering abortion a legitimate excuse for missing class is part of his gambit to maximize civilizational survival? Double wow.

I’m often struck by how much those who talk the most about saving “Western civilization” seem to pose the biggest threat to it (see Norcross’ comment below). Then again, as Case notes in the Quillette review, Bonevac’s civilizational consequentialism might recommend undermining Western civilization in favor of a more durable form of civilization. Maybe Bonevac is a Eurasianist.

Sam Duncan

Reply toMarc Champagne

7 days ago

I mean it seems like he takes the dumbest parts of Hegel and runs with it. Even Case doesn’t seem terribly sympathetic to it. Which is understandable because, it doesn’t even make sense as far as I can tell. Hegel thinks civilizations are important because in some sense God himself comes to know himself through them. As an answer as to why they matter in ways individuals don’t it’s nuts but at least it’s an answer. Does Bonevac likewise believe that civilizations have experience? If not why care as a consequentialist? Or do they instantiate some incredibly high degree of some kind of Moorean good? That’s also a pretty problematic view. Or is it that civilizations enable some kind of flourishing on the part of their citizens? That might be true but even if it is it’s just bog standard utilitarianism with some rather dubious empirical assumptions. It’s possible he has some answers to those questions but it’s also possible cat food is delicious. Both seem quite improbable and what’s much more likely is that giving Bonevac or cat food the benefit of the doubt would be an experience that lowers my own utility however you define it.

grymes

9 days ago

Purely procedurally speaking, Bonevac seems to misunderstand the professional relationship between instructors and TAs.

108

David Hildebrand

Reply togrymes

4 days ago

In the sense that the TA is technically hired by the departmentChair, not the Instructor/Professor?

grymes

Reply toDavid Hildebrand

2 days ago

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/philosophy/graduate-program/admissions.html

Ariana Peruzzi

9 days ago

Yikes on a bike.

Katrina Sifferd

9 days ago

WT actual F.

Katrina Sifferd

Reply toKatrina Sifferd

9 days ago

Relatedly, if philosophers in southern states need to put a student in touch with someone in a northern state that provides reproductive services, please feel free to reach out. I can connect students with https://www.chicagoabortionfund.org/ and offer transport or other help.

apeiron

9 days ago

Are women allowed to wear pants or only tradwife sundresses?

141

Claire Katz

Reply toapeiron

4 days ago

I was literally going to ask this! If so, he’s already allowing cross dressing.

Hieronymus

9 days ago

“It’s not a skirt, but a kilt I have on with my high heals (sic).”

A grad student

Reply toHieronymus

9 days ago

High-heels which, it should be noted, I am wearing as a man in continuation of a European tradition which goes back to the Persia-mania of the 17th century and which reached Scotland through the Auld Alliance with France.

newly tt

9 days ago

I guess I find this morally wrong, but the aesthetic wrongs here (“can you make us sound as much like Mr. Collins as possible, please?”) are just overwhelming.

An adjunct

9 days ago

it’s the parity between the rules of grammar and the laws of texas that indicates the presence of a first-rate mind behind this impressive action.

Michael Kates

9 days ago

This is just appalling professional and human behavior.

Nathan Howard

9 days ago

“I’m sure you can make your points effectively without, for example, name calling, etc.”

But my point was to call Bonevac something that rhymes with bucking fonster.

Justin

9 days ago

All else aside, they’re wrong about the rules of grammar. “They” has been used as a singular pronoun in some cases for centuries, typically when referring to a subject that doesn’t have a male or female gender or whose gender is unknown. “Someone came through here earlier; they left footprints.”

OED’s earliest reference for singular they is from 1375. https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?tl=true

These guys are a pair of controlling bullies who have no business teaching.

116

Circe

Reply toJustin

9 days ago

I know, right? It is utterly bizarre…

Jamie Dreier

Reply toJustin

9 days ago

That thou hast used a plural pronoun as singular for hundreds of years doth not make it singular.
Grammar is mine, I will correct, saith the Lord.

Eric Hagedorn

Reply toJamie Dreier

9 days ago

God (or at least the King James Bible) used singular ‘they’ on more than one occasion.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003572.html

Last edited 9 days ago by Eric Hagedorn

A grad student

Reply toJustin

9 days ago

This is a pet peeve of mine, but I think the use of singular “they” for definite referents is an innovation in English grammar. The earliest citations for “they” as a singular pronoun are for cases in which the antecedent is grammatically singular but notionally plural. The sentence could be rephrased using a plural antecedent without a significant change in meaning. The type of (1), which could be rephrased as “All students…”:

(1) Every student should hand in their homework by the end of class.

Significantly later, you get citations in which the antecedent is notionally singular but indefinite. The speaker does not know who they are and they could not (e.g.) refer to them demonstratively, as in (2).

(2) Whoever stole the silver candlestick should return their loot to the Rector’s office by midnight.

Usage with definite referents as in (3) only systematically emerges in the late 20th century:

(3) This is Kim. They are my best friend.

Many languages draw a grammatical distinction between cases like (2) and (3). From the 20th century and early, you see people who seem to be sincerely struggling with how to refer to people who don’t fit in the gender binary. If (3) was fully grammatical in their idiolect, that would be strange. So, I think it’s plausible that for most English speakers in the 20th century, (3) was ungrammatical. The construction is a genuine innovation.

Don’t get me wrong though. I think it’s a great innovation! It serves serves valuable needs, e.g. respecting the preferences of people who are not appropriately referred to as either ‘she’ or ‘he’ as well as denoting a definite referent whose gender we do not know, do not want to reveal or do not want to attract attention to. It fits very naturally into the fabric of the English language, which already has usages like (1) and (2) as well as “you” as a shared singular and plural pronoun and occasional instances of singular “we” and “us”. Whatever reasons we might have for abiding by inherited rules of grammar are outweighed by reasons to use singular “they” as in (3).

But I think as speakers of English, many conservatives have a feel for the distinction between (1)/(2) and (3). Mocking them as ignoramuses is fun, and not undeserved in general. However, we are not going to convince anyone by it who is not already with us. Besides, the extension of singular “they” to definite referents is a great example of how speakers can more or less deliberately shape language to reflect their values. We are not powerless against the language we inherit (pace Sapir and Whorf)/

Louis

Reply toA grad student

8 days ago

I am equally peeved by the continual insistence that the use of “they” in (3) is not a linguistic innovation, when clearly it is. It is disappointing that academics are increasingly willing to place their pursuit of activism ahead of their pursuit of truth.

I also agree with you that it’s a good innovation but the fact that it’s an innovation is highly relevant to question of whether it is reasonable to mandate it use in classrooms, workplaces, etc.

(Since it’s likely that someone will try to interpret this post in the most uncharitable way possible, let me add a few points to clarify my broader position:

(i) I agree that the use of “they” in (1) and (2) is NOT a linguistic innovation (in the relevant sense).

(ii) I’m not weighing in on whether the use of “they” in (3)–which is an innovation–should be mandated in classrooms or not, but I suspect not.

(iii) I am not endorsing anything else that Bonevac is saying. In particular, I think that it’s none of his business whether and why his TAs seek an abortion, and his concern for what they wear is frankly quite odd–although the rules for what counts as professional dress in workplaces is often quite odd. For example: in many high-end law firms woman are REQUIRED to wear heals and make-up, which has always struck me as extremely unreasonable.)

Descriptive Grammarian

Reply toLouis

8 days ago

Significantly later, you get citations in which the antecedent is notionally singular but indefinite. The speaker does not know who they are and they could not (e.g.) refer to them demonstratively, as in (2)[:]
(2) Whoever stole the silver candlestick should return their loot to the Rector’s office by midnight.

Is the distinction between the usage illustrated by (2) and the plural pronoun use Bonevac objects to a grammatical one, though? It seems important, since Bonevac claims his problem with the singular ‘they’ is that it violates grammar rules.

Your first criterion for distinguishing (2) from what Bonevac doesn’t like seems epistemic (“the speaker doesn’t know who [the referent is]”), not grammatical.

On the second criterion (usability of demonstratives): it seems to me that, in (2), the speaker could refer to the thief with a demonstrative determiner, as in ‘this thief’ or ‘this person.’ But it seems like that’s almost always the typical way to use a determiner to refer to a person (we rarely just say ‘this’ or ‘that’ to refer to a person). Even if there’s a kind of demonstrative they couldn’t use, is there an argument that this “couldn’t” is one of grammar?

I don’t doubt that the use of ‘they’ for a specific, known person is an innovation. It’s just not clear to me what kind of innovation it is, and so I see no reason to accept the premise of a (revised) version of Bonevac’s argument to the effect that it’s a violation of the rules of grammar. It could be a linguistic innovation of another kind (maybe pragmatics, broadly construed?). Or, couldn’t it be more like a theoretical innovation, like if a community were to go from applying ‘fish’ to whales and seals to not doing so?

Matt

Reply toDescriptive Grammarian

8 days ago

I’m fine with using singular “they”. But everyone should note how odd it is to insist that use of “they” in singular reference to one individual is “ungrammatical”. Because we still use the *plural* copula when using singular “they”. Thus when speaking of someone — whether because they prefer such a pronoun, or when one doesn’t know their gender or preference — (1) is fine, but (2) is ungrammatical:

(1) They are sleeping.
(2) # They is sleeping.

But “is” is the correct copula for singular terms: in terms of grammar, we’d be required to use “is” for other singular pronouns like “he”, “she”, even “it”. Incidentally though, this point also throws water on the idea that such a use of “they” is singular. It’s singular in intended referent, but grammatically (still) plural. Thus in this ‘debate’, the two sides are rather talking past each other.

Jonathan Kendrick

Reply toMatt

8 days ago

This is only the case in Standard American English and other prestige dialects. In AAVE and the dialect of Southern American English I grew up speaking, “They is sleeping” is perfectly grammatical. This whole conversation seems to be premised on a tacit acceptance of linguistic prescriptivism, which I find odd.

Jonathan Kendrick

Reply toJonathan Kendrick

8 days ago

https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/expletive-they (I grew up speaking Ozark English btw)

Meme

Reply toJonathan Kendrick

8 days ago

Perhaps the discussion above is best understood as tacitly restricted to Standard American English, since that’s what its participants appear to be speaking. Restricted in that way, the discussion seems appropriately descriptive. Of course, that’s not to say that we should only care about SAE—but presumably the discussants aren’t claiming otherwise.

Last edited 8 days ago by Meme

Matt

Reply toJonathan Kendrick

4 days ago

Jonathan: that’s good to note, but of course I was assuming the community who has internalized (some of) SAE, and I needn’t assume prescriptivism to make my point. Indeed, since my point was that even (in SAE) singular referential use of “they” is ‘grammatical’ given its copula “are”, it’s unclear why it’s relevant to point to other dialects wherein use of singular “they” is also grammatical.

A grad student

Reply toMatt

4 days ago

By the same argument you could say that “you” is not a singular pronoun in SAE in similar dialects. (1) is grammatical while (2) is not.

(1) You are sleeping.
(2) # You am/art/is sleeping.

One reason to think that “singular ‘they'” is grammatically singular in some sense is its use in anaphora:

(3) My best student has handed in their paper.

In SAE and similar dialects, agreement in number between an antecedent and an anaphoric pronoun is a grammatical matter. It’s governed by the antecedent’s grammatical number, not the natural number of the intended referent. This can be seen from the use of “they” with pluralia tantum:

(4) Look at my favorite trousers. They have/# It has such a lovely color.

Compare (5), where the intended real-world referent consists in exactly the same object:

(5) Look at my favorite pair of trousers. It has/# They have such a lovely color.

Given that it agrees with “my best student”, “they” in (3) is genuinely singular (or unmarked for number) in some grammatical sense. This is so even if it is clearly plural for purposes of verbal agreement, as you show.

a grad student

Reply toDescriptive Grammarian

5 days ago

This is an interesting question. Cases in the type of (2) can be rephrased with indefinite noun phrases, just like cases in the type of (1) can be rephrased with plural phrases: “A student has stolen a candlestick; they must return it to the Rector’s office.” The distinction between definite and indefinite noun phrases is clearly grammatical. I don’t have time to test this, but I might conjecture that we can divided the type of (2) into two sub-types. In (2a), the antecedent is actually indefinite in terms of surface grammar. In (2b), it is ‘notionally indefinite’, just like the antecedents in (1) are notionally plural.

However, I suspect this might be an area where the distinction between grammatical and ‘worldly’ knowledge becomes fuzzy. In some sense, a lot of our grammatical knowledge can be said to embody fundamental understanding of the world: There are individuals and properties instantiated by these individuals. There are states as well momentary events (which may or may not constitute a change of state) and temporally extended activities (which may or may not culminate in a final momentary event). All this is encoded in subtle distinctions within the grammar of verbs. Perhaps there used to be another, less fundamental bit of grammatical-worldy “understanding”: Everyone is either male of female, and if you are acquainted with someone, you know which one it is. This understanding has been revised in the 20th century.

James Sherman

Reply toLouis

3 days ago

Poppyco*ck. “ Over the centuries, writers of standing have used they, their, and them with anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun, and the practice has continued in the 20C. to the point that, traditional grammarians aside, such constructions are hardly noticed any more or are not widely felt to lie in a prohibited zone. ” The New Fowler’s English Usage, p. 779

Justin Kalef

Reply toJames Sherman

3 days ago

Why, how foolish of all the great authorities on grammar (Strunk, the Fowlers, etc. etc.) to have entirely overlooked this seemingly obvious and uncontroversial detail about language. I mean, the editors of today are clearly not skewed toward any particular political faction, just as contemporary intellectuals in general tend to be evenly divided between conservatives and progressives, and there’s just no way that any of them would feel any internal or external pressure to conform to trendy sociopolitical currents. So what could possibly explain the phenomena, other than that the greatest authorities the English language has ever known, as they wrote their great works about a century ago, all suffered from the very same inexplicable lapse in judgment and failed to notice what was right before their eyes the whole time?

Michel

Reply toJustin Kalef

3 days ago

Phenomenon.

Justin Kalef

Reply toMichel

3 days ago

The phrase is “explain the phenomena.” The phenomena in this case include the completely different verdicts on singular ‘they’ (when mean to refer to a single person, considered as a person and not as one of countless possible people, etc.) between the great authorities on grammar and style in our time and in the last century.

Michel

Reply toJustin Kalef

3 days ago

You’ve listed one phenomenon.

Meme

Reply toMichel

2 days ago

(If I may) I read Justin as using “phenomena” like a sort of mass noun, much as “appearances” in “this account saves the appearances.” It’s not meant to denote a list of specific phenomena, not even in the singular case (where, I agree, “phenomenon” would be correct).

Justin Kalef

Reply toMichel

2 days ago

By that standard, Galileo only had one phenomenon to explain by his new theory of the heavens — the appearance of the night sky over time.

a grad student

Reply toJames Sherman

3 days ago

The question is if these antecendents were definite and notionally plural. All the early examples I have seen are of the “every student should hand in their homework” type, i.e. notionally plural and indefinite. Use with notionally singular and definite (e.g. proper noun) antecedents could still well be an innovation.

Jamie Dreier

Reply toa grad student

3 days ago

I think you’re right about the history, and also I think the possessive ‘their’ in your example is significant — that’s much more common in the nineteenth century than singular ‘them’ or ‘they’.
But I don’t quite see why you think this is so important. Sure, you could replace the false-for-centuries claim that singular ‘they’ is ungrammatical with the only recently-false claim that singular ‘they’ with definite known antecedent is ungrammatical. But it’s still false (and asserted without evidence).

Is your point that the charitable interpretation is less absurd?

Justin Kalef

Reply toJamie Dreier

3 days ago

Jamie, why do you describe the rule against singular ‘they’ as false-for-centuries?

I’m asking sincerely, since I’m planning to write something longer about this elsewhere, and I want to be sure I understand the view you and others seem to hold about grammatical norms.

My own view is that grammatical norms are similar to rules about the signals we use and read while driving. They are significantly socially contingent, without a doubt; but the whole point of them is to avoid miscommunications and other forms of confusion. Our ability to co-ordinate our following of these rules, and to revise them to avoid problems of ambiguity that are apt to crop up, is the end that they are meant to help us attain. So the rules of grammar and usage are not (as moral realists say about many moral rules) purely an attempt to capture our relationship to mind-independent facts, but they are also not just wholly arbitrary.

Most important, this should make clear how certain changes in the accepted linguistic norms of a given language can be objective improvements or worsenings of the language as a whole.

If the language at a certain point muddles the distinction between two different things we find it useful to distinguish, and authorities on language manage to work out and then promote a way of handling the difference without any confusion, then that new rule improves the language, or at least there is a good reason to favor that new rule. There are other factors to consider, too: for instance, we want to preserve the ability to read the great writers of the past, so there is some reason not to radically change the rules of the language.

Since the grammatical rules are meant to be normative, it seems strange to count instances of earlier writers violating the new rules as false. For instance, suppose that a prominent 18th century English philosopher is found to have said things like, “If God created anything, then (necessarily) God existed at that time.” If philosophers today are careful to limit the word ‘necessarily’ to cases where what comes after that word is true in any possible world, then we should read the 18th century philosopher with the understanding that he wasn’t following the rule we have today: the Principle of Charity demands it. But it seems unfairly harsh to call our new rule about the use of ‘necessarily’ false-for-centuries just because older writers didn’t have that rule.

The same seems to be true of some aspects of singular ‘they’. As far as I know at this point, the application of this rule to cases in which the antecedent of the pronoun is ‘someone’ or ‘anyone’ or ‘everyone’ was not standardized two hundred years ago, though (again, as far as I know) nearly anyone would have seen something very wrong in replying to, “I’d like to introduce you to my cousin” with, “Oh, what’s their name?” The rule that we should avoid ‘they’ to refer back to ‘someone’, ‘anyone’, and ‘everyone’ was meant to enhance the logic and clarity of the language — it avoids the ambiguity, for instance, of saying, “If you meet someone with many enemies, give them your support.” But since the clarified rule at that time was not intended to be a categorical description of all previous usage but rather a norm that helps clarify our use of language, it seems odd to me to call it false. That implies to me that it was introduced as a description rather than a prescription.

Have I misunderstood what you are saying here?

T.J.

Reply toJustin Kalef

2 days ago

Sorry to butt in since you addressed your reply to Jamie.

The rule isn’t false; that’s a category mistake.

The claim that there was such a rule is what’s false. The examples given above of cases where singular ‘they’ was used centuries ago are supposed to be what demonstrates that claim to be false.

The recently false claim is that there is currently a rule against singular ‘they’ with a definite antecedent. The widespread use of singular ‘they’ with a definite antecedent is what’s supposed to demonstrate that claim to be false.

Justin Kalef

Reply toT.J.

2 days ago

But what you’re assuming here is just what I’m calling into question. To say that a rule ought to be followed is to make a normative utterance. To say that a rule has not always been followed is to make a descriptive utterance. The fact that a rule has not consistently been followed does not entail that there is no such rule, since the rule is normative rather than descriptive.

Compare: if, in April 2020, someone claims that there’s a social norm of standing at least six feet away from others, it will not do to show all sorts of instances of people standing closer to each other than that and use this to establish that there is no such rule. Some people break rules, and some rules are established or clarified at different times.

T.J.

Reply toJustin Kalef

2 days ago

You’re making a mistake in conflating regulative and constitutive rules (as Jamie points out below).

The rules of grammar are constitutive; they help define what it is for something to be an utterance of Standard American English (or what have you).

Social norms are regulative rules; they help define how one ought to behave.

Maybe the point you have in mind is that the existence of an utterance is compatible with either its being grammatical or its being ungrammatical. So, the mere existence of an utterance won’t tell in favor of one or the other claim.

But, parsimony speaks in favor of interpreting an example of an utterance as grammatical. It’s a worse explanation of a centuries old utterance to say there was a grammar rule which this utterance failed to follow while the explanation that the utterance was grammatical is on the table. We’re forced to imagine the existence of a rule for which we’ve seen no evidence.

So, the burden is on the person claiming the existence of such a rule to show that it existed. It’s not enough to merely imagine that it might have existed.

A grad stude

Reply toJamie Dreier

2 days ago

I think this matters as a practical point about rhetoric. Some conservative insists that singular ‘they’ is ungrammatical, having in mind recent examples with definite referents. Some liberal responds with an example that is 700 years old, but features a notionally plural antecedent. Any reader with a native speaker’s feel for the English language can sense that the example is besides the point. If they already agree with the liberal, they might be happy the conservative got owned. If not, they probably feel the argument is disingenuous and sophistical. And I think we should try to convince some people if we choose to argue about a topic, even if not directly those we are arguing with.

Jamie Dreier

Reply toA grad stude

2 days ago

That’s interesting.
To me it seems like the grammatic conservative is the one trying to pull a rhetorical trick. Just insisting that the construction in question is ungrammatical is lame. So instead they say, ‘they’ is plural and it’s illogical to use it as a singular. That sounds like an argument!
Pointing out that it has been used as a singular for 700 years utterly defeats that trick. Then we’re back to facts on the ground, as it were, and each side can just give evidence. (And I’m pretty confident about who will win.)

Jamie Dreier

Reply toA grad stude

2 days ago

p.s. I am very sorry to see that you have lost your ‘nt’. I am worried that some overambitious surgeon performed an unwanted contractionectomy by mistake.

Greg

Reply toJustin

7 days ago

I would not cite grammar as the main reason for my refusal to address people based on their self-perceived gender identity. I simply have the right not to have my speech policed. I do not see these individuals as having their preferred gender identity, and that is grounds enough to address them by the pronouns which are congruous with my conception of gender identity: in my opinion, gender identity necessarily follows biological sex.

Tim

Reply toGreg

5 days ago

Sometimes, to know whether you should do something, you don’t need to ask whether you have a right to do it, since you can just ask whether you’d be a jerk and stop there.

krell_154

Reply toTim

2 days ago

Sometimes, for some things. But it doesn’t mean that you are always a jerk if you refuse to do things the way somebody else wants you to do them.

And this (gender pronouns) is one of such cases.

Julian

9 days ago

It is striking that for their first point they take time to explain how they intend to skirt Bostock, but not for the second point, which seems like an obvious and egregious violation.

One more in a long line of sad embarrassments for our profession.

A grad student

Reply toJulian

9 days ago

I guess they think that the notion of ‘cross-dressing’ gets them around it. The relevant action-type, they think, is not “wearing a dress” but “cross-dressing”. Cross-dressing is something that (they say) they don’t tolerate for male or female TAs. AFAIK, this was a standard interpretation of Bostock for a time, but is now contrary to established precedent! Also, I suspect it would be hard to find a ‘masculine’ way to dress that they could forbid for TAs whom they consider women without being seen as overbearing even by mainstream conservative standards. I they really going to object to any TA wearing a suit and tie?

Nicolas Delon

9 days ago

Third. I will not knowingly treat an absence from class to obtain an illegal abortion or a purely elective abortion as an excused absence. The law of Texas has outlawed and criminalized abortion in all circ*mstances unless the mother’s life is in danger. See Tex. Health & Safety Code § 170A.002(a). And federal law imposes criminal liability on any person who obtains abortion drugs through the mail, or from an express company or common carrier or through an interactive computer service— including pregnant women who obtain these pills for use in a self-managed abortion. See 18 U.S.C. § 1461–1462. I will not accommodate or become complicit in these crimes by excusing a student’s absence from class if that student skips class to obtain an illegal abortion in Texas, or to perform a self-managed abortion with illegally obtained abortion drugs.

Will Professor Bonevac wait until a conviction to mark the student absent, or will he bypass due process? If the former, will he be classy and then email the student, after they (sic, per the new Bonevac grammar) have been convicted, “Oh, by the way, your absence is unexcused, bummer, you’re also going to jail.”? Regarding complicity, am I complicit if a student of mine is in the hospital after driving under the influence and I excuse their absence? Is Professor Bonevac complicit with the famously law-abiding president he has publicly supported and helped to elect? When is it okay to break the law? Asking for many friends.

Nor will I knowingly excuse a student’s absence from class if that student leaves the state to obtain a purely elective abortion. I will certainly accommodate students who are seeking medically necessary abortions in response to a pregnancy that threatens the student’s life or health. But I will not accommodate a purely elective abortion that serves only to kill an unborn child that was conceived through an act of voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse. Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not “health care” or “medical treatment” of any sort. They are purely elective procedures, and I will not accommodate an act of violence against the most vulnerable and defenseless members of the human family.

A vasectomy is also a purely elective procedure and yet it’s a medical procedure. The fact that pregnancy is not a disease is completely irrelevant.

Fourth. I expect my teaching assistants to obey and respect the laws of Texas and the laws of the United States, so I will not knowingly hire a teaching assistant who has violated the abortion laws of Texas or the federal-law prohibitions on the shipment or receipt of abortion pills and abortion-related paraphernalia. See 18 U.S.C. § 1461–1462. The Title IX rule purports to ban “discrimination” against anyone who has had an abortion, even if the abortion was illegal and even if the woman violated or aided or abetted violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1461–1462 to obtain the abortion. But I do not hire criminals or lawbreakers to serve as teaching assistants, and I will not comply with this concocted non-discrimination rule.

If the abortion was in fact illegal, will he, again, wait until conviction? What if it was performed in a state in which abortion is legal? How much will Professor Bonevac invade people’s privacy to enforce his personal morality in the classroom and in the workplace?

yikes

9 days ago

I find their concern for “professional attire” re: gender fascinating, given Bonevac’s increasing use of AI-generated images of young, attractive women as thumbnails for his YT videos, including the most recent which involves gratuitous cleavage (irrelevant to the lecture’s subject matter) – in contrast to the images of men he includes, which are always neck-up and historically appropriate. As a female TA, you’re presumably welcome to present yourself as a sexualized feminine object! All in the name of professionalism, of course.

Dr. Lothar Leidernicht

Reply toyikes

8 days ago

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Female TAs should be appropriately attractive, otherwise they won’t be hired.

Phaedra

9 days ago

Professor Bonevac was (in)famous for his support of Donald Trump. And DailyNous appeared to report him before, see https://dailynous.com/2017/09/18/political-uniformity-religion-philosophy/

Circe

Reply toPhaedra

9 days ago

He apparently will not hire criminals or lawbreakers. Will he vote for one?!

Kav

9 days ago

It doesn’t take a singular use of ‘they’ to make a fool out of yourself. I wonder if the Humpty Dumpty argument holds up in court.

Last edited 9 days ago by Kav

Circe

9 days ago

The rules! Won’t someone think of the rules!

Dave Wilton

9 days ago

“Although I am not opposed to hiring a crossdresser or transvestite as a teaching assistant, they must refrain from this behavior while on the job.”

James Sherman

Reply toDave Wilton

9 days ago

I think it’s particularly cool that the singular ‘they’ begins its 650 year-old history in a romance called ‘William and the Werewolf’: ‘Hastely hiȝedeche. . .þeineyȝþed so neiȝh . . . þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere.’ https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?tl=true

Sam Elgin

Reply toDave Wilton

8 days ago

I am extremely confident that the irony will be lost…

Dr. Lothar Leidernicht

9 days ago

This is awesome, more power to hims! We need more such Hatfields and Bonevacs unions to spread the rule of grammatics that is being violeted (sometimes even pinked or outright magented!) on daily basis by willfully cross-dressing teaching assistants and purely elective student hobby-abortionists whose will it is to make fools of their well-intentioned mantors and profanissors. I applaud these well-timed efforts to promote covfefe.

James Sherman

9 days ago

I will not honor any student’s demands to be addressed by the singular pronoun “they”—regardless of whether those demands come from a biological man or a biological woman, and regardless of whether the person making those demands identifies with a gender that matches or departs from his biologically assigned sex

Is anyone else *shocked* to learn that Dan thinks biological sex is assigned??

I am so confused.

V. Alan White

Reply toJames Sherman

9 days ago

And someone born with sex characteristics of both? Will he not respect such a request from them? Or just assign one given his best guess based on some kind of superficial appearance? What a/an ________. Fill in your best impression, based on his appearance here. (With respect to Justin.)

Mike Austin

9 days ago

I’ll just say, as a Christian philosopher, instead of this we could just try to love our students.

Mike Titelbaum

8 days ago

How exactly can a professor “permit” or “allow” their TA—a contracted state employee—to wear certain types of clothing in class, especially at the professor’s own personal discretion?

grymes

Reply toMike Titelbaum

8 days ago

aye, not to mention the purported ability to refrain from “hiring” “lawbreakers”

Mark van Roojen

Reply toMike Titelbaum

7 days ago

Yes this. The professors seem to think that supervising a TA extends way beyond the normal bounds of making sure they do the job of teaching and grading well and working within the terms of themselves being part of a department and university that set the general standards of such supervision.

Anat Schechtman

8 days ago

As a UT faculty member, I want to emphasize that neither I nor many of my colleagues here share Professor Bonevac’s positions. I honor students’ and colleagues’ preferred pronouns and would be happy to work with all TAs regardless of their attire. Nor do I question students’ or TAs’ reasons for their medical absences.

John Bengson

Reply toAnat Schechtman

8 days ago

What Anat said.

Karl Schafer

Reply toAnat Schechtman

8 days ago

I just want to second what Anat says. Like many others, the department at UT contains a wide range of opinions on some of these issues, but almost all of us would agree with her on the points she makes here.

Katherine Dunlop

Reply toKarl Schafer

8 days ago

What Anat and Karl said.

Dr. Lothar Leidernicht

Reply toAnat Schechtman

8 days ago

What if they only wear a sock like RHCP’s Flea of Princess Leias dress when she was Jabba the Hutts prisoner? Or come in a wedding dress or dressed like policemen? I think the problem is that we all rely on standards of professional decency and general reasonabless but once we try to put rule on these conventional standards think can get quickly out of hand. I fear Bonevac might succeed since I think dressing however one likes at work is not a human right.

Samuel Wolf Cantor

Reply toDr. Lothar Leidernicht

8 days ago

As a grad student at UT philosophy who despises RHCP and takes Return of the Jedi to be the single greatest blow to the quality and integrity of the Star Wars franchise: I second Dr. Liedernicht’s sentiment.

Mike Titelbaum

Reply toDr. Lothar Leidernicht

6 days ago

This is an employment matter. If a TA showed up to my class wearing, say, only a sock, I would first say something to them (probably leading with an inquiry into whether they were doing okay). If the behavior persisted, I would bring it up with my department leadership, who would take it to HR, at which point various procedures would be followed. Any complex decisions in the vicinity about professional attire would not be up to me to adjudicate.

Dr. Lothar Leidernicht

Reply toMike Titelbaum

6 days ago

So you’d let them teach until ‘various procedures’ were followed?

Mike Titelbaum

Reply toDr. Lothar Leidernicht

6 days ago

I don’t have the power to “let” or not “let” anyone teach. TAs are state employees, working under a contract, and I don’t have the authority to unilaterally violate that contract.

Dr. Lothar Leidernicht

Reply toMike Titelbaum

3 days ago

That’s interesting. In regular jobs, there is usually someone with a supervising authority. I would have assumed that that is the primary instructor and/or departmental chair. It has nothing to do with violating a contract. I know that many departments have this explicitly defined – that the supervisor can, in case of incompetence or other factors impacting the class, intervene and even replace the TA.

I don’t agree with what Bonevac is doing at all. I think it’s absurd posturing, and it goes very much against the spirit of academy and university. But I do wonder if he might have a case (legally) precisely because of how relatively blurry the rules are. Say “professional attire” – what is that for us? Not distracting to the students and relying on some “accepted” standards? What are those? I don’t know how things work, hopefully the whole thing can be dismissed but I don’t know…

a grad student

Reply toDr. Lothar Leidernicht

9 hours ago

Based on Bostock v. Clayton County, he cannot apply different standards of dress based on what he takes to be the sex of the TA. So, if he tolerates some students wearing dresses or skirts, he must tolerate all students wearing dresses or skirts. So, perhaps he could try to enforce a dress code where everybody has to dress in a gender-neutral way. But that doesn’t seem to be what he is up to.

Alastair Norcross

8 days ago

This is very sad. Dan used to be a reasonably well respected member of the profession. He’s completely gone off the deep end in recent years. His support of that stupid statistical argument to argue that Biden’s vote numbers were somehow manipulated was a complete embarrassment (easily and often debunked), but this latest stuff takes it to a whole new level.

Kimberly Dill

Reply toAlastair Norcross

8 days ago

I agree, Alastair. In graduate school at UTAustin, I considered Dan both a mentor and friend. We had rich discussions about comparative philosophy (e.g., Buddhism and Confucianism), multi-valued logic, virtue ethics, and the importance of compassion. I TAed for him and Stephen Phillips in their co-taught “Philosophy, East and West” and, once graduated, even taught some of my intro students from their co-edited book, _Introduction to World Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader_. I feel very disheartened and disappointed to witness all of this, and have since been vocal with him about the inappropriateness and dangerousness of his actions (in relationship to UTAustin undergrad and grad students), for what it’s worth.

Last edited 8 days ago by Kimberly Dill

Jonathan Kendrick

Reply toAlastair Norcross

8 days ago

Yeah, he is/was an excellent philosopher. I really like a lot of his work in deontic logic. This is a good reminder that even extremely intelligent people are susceptible to culture war brain rot.

Fritz Allhoff

Reply toJonathan Kendrick

6 days ago

I mean, this one applies to some liberals as well; it’s not only the conservatives that are susceptible to it.

Jonathan Kendrick

Reply toFritz Allhoff

4 days ago

Absolutely. In my opinion, the Republican election deniers, like Donevac, and the Russia-gate Democrats are two sides of the same coin. However, anecdotally, the conservative crazies appear to behave in ways that are much more problematic than the liberal crazies. Storming the capital or shooting up a synagogue is, I think, clearly far worse than Rachel Maddow running her 100th segment about how Trump is a secret Russian agent.

Louis Zapst

8 days ago

This screams inconsequential moralistic expression. This teacher says he won’t knowingly be complicit in an abortion. How will he know the student is planning to get an abortion? I doubt that in Texas a teacher has the right to know the particulars of a medical appointment before excusing a student. The teacher could ask for a “doctor’s note” but that need not (actually should not) mention the particular medical condition without the student’s consent. That the appointment is out of state is irrelevant, as many people travel for all sorts of medical appointments. My own view is that students and colleagues should be glad for this teacher’s immature moralistic performance. Now they know exactly what he thinks and they know to avoid him if they can.

Justin Kalef

Reply toLouis Zapst

8 days ago

“This screams inconsequential moralistic expression.”

That perfectly summarizes my thoughts on reading a great many comments in this thread! I try to read charitably, but I cannot find a plausible explanation (other than mere moralistic expression) for why the people who posted them thought it would advance the discussion to do so.

Pageturner

Reply toJustin Kalef

6 days ago

I tried to read your comment charitably, but I cannot for the life of me discern why you think it appropriate to hold a comments section to the same standard of a lawsuit. Purely moral expression is perfectly acceptable in the first context, but not the second.

Justin Kalef

Reply toPageturner

6 days ago

I don’t see why. Isn’t the point here to have a conversation in which we explore issues by having conversations with other people who have something useful to contribute to the discussion?

Here’s a model of useful conversation: there’s some issue on which some people think one thing, and other people think another. The people on both sides give reasons for why they think what they do, and engage with what the other people are saying. As they discuss the matter, they get closer to the truth or at least to understanding each other.

Here’s another: an argument is presented for some surprising conclusion. Nearly everyone is initially inclined to think that the conclusion is wrong, which is what makes the thing so interesting and useful to discuss. A few people end up defending the argument, even though they might find the conclusion counterintuitive. That’s what makes the conversation so great to read.

Here’s one more: some new problem is presented that nobody has really thought much about at all, and everyone explores it together.

By contrast, the following seems to me an embarrassingly bad kind of conversation to have on a philosophy blog: someone does something that it seems hardly anyone will want to defend. The initial post gives all the details that will cause most of the readers of the blog to get outraged. This gives them the moral exhilaration that arises from comparing yourself to people you and your peer group see as significantly morally inferior. A number of readers add comments that express the extent of their shock, outrage, and/or moral condemnation of the person. No arguments are needed in the context, as virtually all the readers will already think that the behavior is outrageous. The point is not to persuade anyone, but rather to revel in a sense of collective outrage and grandstanding. Once enough people have expressed their condemnation and astonishment, some commenters move into the next phase, which is sarcastic mockery, low blows, and the presentation of apparent inconsistencies, all aimed at the target. Other people who want a piece of the action try to keep the thing going by remembering or discovering other things about the target that can be raised to heighten the festival of contempt, disparagement, and ridicule. Once the crowd has got the target on the ground and is beating on him, it seems, the wish to get one’s own kick in is hard to resist.

When I see these last sorts of discussions, especially among professional philosophers or people who are soon to become professional philosophers, I grow so despondent that I often end up internally rooting for the target, even if I would generally be inclined to condemn whatever the target did. It’s high school all over again, except that I avoided people who did this back in high school. I got into philosophy as a way of associating with people who wanted to spend their conversations thinking through interesting things rather than engaging in gossip and character assassination as a way of bonding with one another and feeling good about themselves. No matter how many times it happens, some part of me is surprised that any philosophers would find any interest in doing it.

Julian

Reply toJustin Kalef

6 days ago

I do not understand the impulse to respond to “I intend to mistreat people (and will overstep my authority to do so)” with “interesting, let’s discuss it”.

Where’s the argument? The problem? What is the subject of discussion you envision?

It’s not like Bonevac and Hatfield are engaged anything like inquiry. Why should we pretend that they are?

Justin Kalef

Reply toJulian

6 days ago

I’m not saying that Bonevac or Hatfield engaged in anything like inquiry, or that we should pretend that they are. There are many cases in which someone has acted wrongly and there is no dispute about it. Perhaps this is one of those cases.

If this is one of those cases, then I fail to see the point of having more and more people express their shock and outrage at what has happened, other than providing an outlet for the commenters to make themselves feel and look great by piling onto the wrongdoer. In a setting where nobody feels that the behavior in question is worth defending, nobody will be apt to jump in when people make cheap shots against the person in question in furtherance of their moralizing high. The consequence is more or less always the trashy sort of discussion that makes me feel embarrassed to be a philosopher, whether or not I agree with what the target originally did.

Even if the person in question were revealed to be a serial killer who slaughtered innocent students and colleagues, or something, I would have the same reaction. I would judge that the action was immoral, but would fail to see the point of a whole comment section filled with people adding more and more comments about how bad serial killing is, how stupid and morally contemptible and ridiculous different things the serial killer did, and so on, all providing the readers and contributors with a cheap source of laughs and smugness while doing nothing to make anything better.

Julian

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

You fail to grasp that language is not merely for persuasion or for two people being rational at each other. Sometimes moral condemnation is all there is to do.

It might seem obvious to you that Bonevac acted badly, and perhaps it is obvious to all. But it is not obvious that a majority of philosophers agrees that he obviously acted badly. It is also not obvious that he stands alone with such optionins at Austin.

Moreover, this is a public forum. There’s an audience of onlookers, perhaps only tangentially associated with philosophy, or considering getting into philosophy. Group sentiments among philosophers are certainly not obvious to *them* but conversely might be very important for them to know.

Thus, there is informational value in such condemnation. Most importantly, in some people from the department condemning & clarifying that this is a lone figure.

There’s no need for *discussion* on any of this, but (even when we mistakenly constrain the use of language to purely informational purposes) there is a need for it to be *said*. The kind of jocularity we see here is the socially standard way of doing so.

Justin Kalef

Reply toJulian

5 days ago

I think there are much better ways of promoting moral norms than publicly shaming and ridiculing a member of the profession, or any person for that matter, in a context in which calls for clemency are frowned upon. It would be different if there were a thriving debate on the rightness or wrongness of the person’s actions in that context. When there is not, I think there are strong reasons to refrain.

Michel

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

Bonevac has publicly shamed himself, here. He’s trumpeting his vice for all to see.

And it is vice. He is both morally and factually wrong. This isn’t some liminal case, or someone with good intentions accidentally or incidentally doing something bad.

Justin Kalef

Reply toMichel

5 days ago

Let’s imagine that someone — call him Jones — has done something clearly immoral, and that he has done that thing on purpose, with bad intentions. Let’s take something that isn’t politically exciting, and suppose that Jones was caught stealing $200 out of a fellow professor’s wallet at a conference.

Let’s also imagine that Jones’ theft of the money is mentioned in a professional forum with a huge readership, so that a discussion of Jones’ case there is taking place, for all intents and purposes, in front of all Jones’ colleagues. But — and this is crucial — imagine that there is no dispute on that forum about whether Jones’ theft of the money was wrong.

Finally, imagine that a large number of people show up to add negative comments about the theft of the money, and sometimes just critical comments about Jones. These condemnations of Jones are written by people who have already seen all the other ones. But more people keep adding such comments, mostly written with a great air of gloating moral superiority, even though the writers can see all the similar comments that have already been written.

One can see why the people who write and revel in such comments would like to paint their pile-on in a flattering light by seeing themselves as collectively engaging in the teaching of a moral lesson to the defenders of stealing money. But that would not be a very plausible justification of the pile-on. If there really were a significant number of readers of the forum who felt that stealing the money was morally permissible, then why wouldn’t any of them be speaking up in defense of Jones?

I don’t see how the ‘moral education/ clarification’ justification can be plausible in such a case.

Michel

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

You forgot to mention the part where Jones wrote a proclamation declaring his crime for all to see, and telling us why it was a good and desirable thing.

grad student

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

I think the thought experiment is a false analogy to the Bonevac case and misses a few points that Julian makes:

“It might seem obvious to you that Bonevac acted badly, and perhaps it is obvious to all. But it is not obvious that a majority of philosophers agrees that he obviously acted badly. It is also not obvious that he stands alone with such optionins [sic] at Austin.”

I think in the case of stealing all these are pretty obviously true.

“Moreover, this is a public forum. There’s an audience of onlookers, perhaps only tangentially associated with philosophy, or considering getting into philosophy. Group sentiments among philosophers are certainly not obvious to *them* but conversely might be very important for them to know.”

Again I think in the case of stealing the onlookers do not generally wonder whether philosophers think stealing is wrong.

So I’d agree with you that moral education / clarification is indeed not a plausible rationale in the stealing case. But it may still be a good justification for expressing condemnation in this comments section.

Julian

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

I didn’t say anything about moral education, or moral clarification, or about promulgating moral norms.

I’m here to reassure myself that professional philosophers at large agree that what he’s doing is bad, and to contribute to providing this reassurance to others.

At this point, to be fair, my purpose has moved on to reassurance that “of course X is bad, but the real bad guys are ones who say that X is bad” is also bad behavior.

Jordan

Reply toJulian

6 days ago

I think Justin’s point was that this particular issue ISN’T worth discussing (because it is so clearly morally abhorrent), and so isn’t worth having a comment section about, since the comment section could only serve the purpose of providing a moral grandstanding platform for the commenters.

Justin Kalef

Reply toJordan

6 days ago

Exactly right. Thank you, Jordan.

Julian

Reply toJustin Kalef

6 days ago

How odd of you to agree with this, Justin. You referenced a “discussion” that is not advanced by the present moral grandstanding. What is that discussion?

Or more broadly, what do you think the proper response to morally contemptible behavior is? Pretend there is something to discuss, and proceed under that pretense? Politely nod? Privately disapprove and let the behavior stand unopposed?

Julian

Reply toJordan

6 days ago

Justin’s first complaint, above, was that the present comments do not “advance the discussion”. I am wondering which discussion he means.

Justin Kalef

Reply toJulian

6 days ago

If there’s an interesting matter to explore here, then I mean the discussion of that issue. If there is nothing to discuss because everyone agrees that these people acted wrongly, then why say anything? In that case, the discussion is already over.

Julian

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

See above, you seem to think (falsely) that language is just for discussion.

Justin Kalef

Reply toJulian

5 days ago

I do not think that.

Pageturner

Reply toJustin Kalef

6 days ago

None of Bonevac’s actions will be exonerated by a debate of the sort you describe, because the morality of his actions doesn’t turn on whether the philosophical positions that motivate him are correct.

Bonevac claims authority and powers to which he has no claim at all: to regulate the dress of the students who teach for him, and to punish people for personal decisions of which he doesn’t approve.

We all face a decision in our social lives. Bonevac couldn’t be more explicit about his decision to be openly uncooperative and intolerant of the sincere philosophical differences between him and his students.

Consider this situation. A large group of acquaintances invited me to a French restaurant with no vegetarian options. I sincerely believe that eating meat is morally wrong, and as a matter of conscience, I never eat meat for any reason.

But rather than making some specious argument about the violation of my right to conscience, or threatening to break off all my other cooperative endeavors with these people if we go to the restaurant,

I got up from the table and ate somewhere else for dinner. That’s the way rational adults conduct their social lives, and I’m saying that as someone with genuine social deficits. It’s not hard to be kind, co-operative, and respectful of these differences.

I make no apologies for taking pleasure in the mockery in this comments section.

Justin Kalef

Reply toPageturner

6 days ago

But I’m not saying that Bonevac’s actions will be exonerated by a debate. If they might be, then there is something to discuss, and it would be better to discuss it than to do this. If they definitely will not be, then I fail to see the point of the conversation in the first place.

If you are invited to a restaurant by people who are willfully insensitive to your commitment to ethical vegetarianism, then I agree that protesting about that and then leaving the restaurant would be an acceptable course of action. But that would be different from sitting around with a bunch of people who already agree with you and publicly airing a mocking discussion about the various character flaws and supposed inconsistencies you find in the people who invited you to dinner. That just seems petty to me.

David

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

I’m not sure whether it’s wrong to pile on people expressing odious views or engaging in odious behavior. It may be that this kind of piling on can play a valuable role in maintaining social norms in human communities, but I’m agnostic.
But I would say there’s a model of truth-pursuing conversation that doesn’t fit easily into any of the three you define and that the conversation in this section might conform to:

“here’s something we all agree is wrong or in bad faith or…. As we critique it, we’ll get clearer about what makes it wrong, in bad faith, etc.”

I think it’s important to have these kinds of conversations and not just conversations in which serious cases for both sides of an issue can be made (your models one and two) or in which we don’t know what to think (your model three). Restricting ourselves to topics conforming to one of those three models would keep us away from many influential real-world ideologies, such as Bonevac’s, which are sometimes obviously wrong and have nothing to be said for them. And it seems to me important to discuss and analyze real-world ideologies.

I’m not saying every last comment on this blog post is a constructive contribution to understanding Bonevac or what’s wrong with his views or behavior. But that would be an inappropriate standard to hold “the discussion” to. I do see several comments that explain why Bonevac’s arguments are weak or why his views are wrong. I would think that would be a reasonable standard to hold comments on blog posts to.

Justin Kalef

Reply toDavid

5 days ago

Please note that I listed three different examples of productive conversation-types, but did not say (and do not think) that those examples are exhaustive. I did not at any point say that we should restrict conversations to those three.

I also did not say, and do not think, that none of the contributions in this thread attempt to give reasons for thinking that Bonevac’s arguments are weak. I am saying, however, that a significant number of the commends are not doing that.

David

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

I think by revising your claim from one about “the discussion,” as in previous comments, to one about an undefined “significant number of posts,” you’ve turned it into a platitude that it wouldn’t be constructive to debate. For one, thing, trying to get the number of non-constructive blog comments down to a non-significant number is too ambitious given the very nature of the medium. For another, the phrase, “significant number” is too vague to ground a substantive debate, if anyone were to disagree with the claim.

Furthermore, your particular approach to trying to reduce the number of non-constructive comments (I’m assuming that was your goal given your interest in constructive discussion) is likely to be counter-productive, given its use of uncharitable mind-reading applied generally to an unspecified set of comments critical of Bonevac. This kind of contribution is more likely to make people double-down than change their minds.

I also have to say that I find it a bit strange that, elsewhere, you write agnostically not only about whether Bonevac has done anything wrong, but also about whether he might have done anything wrong. If you don’t want to take a stand on the latter question, I don’t see how you could know that the debate here doesn’t conform to one of your three models (and, indeed, there have been a few defenses of aspects of Bonevac’s arguments in the comments).

(I know you didn’t say the things you say you didn’t say.)

Last edited 5 days ago by David

Justin Kalef

Reply toDavid

2 days ago

I have already explained why much of this mischaracterizes what I have said, and I don’t think that moderately charitable readers will be misled by it. I did not revise my claim in the way you say. I have never denied that “there have been a few defenses of aspects of Bonevac’s arguments in the comments.” I do not intend to “ground a substantive debate” of a sort that requires precision about the number of comments here I am apt to object to. I am merely registering my unhappiness with the sorts of comments I have described.

I am confident that many readers will know what I am talking about and see my point, whether or not you are among them. That is sufficient for my purposes.

BCB

Reply toJustin Kalef

5 days ago

You know, I’m normally fairly sympathetic to this kind of complaint.

But Bonevac’s stated policy crosses a line: inarguably, it is both (a) a gross overreach of institutional authority, and (b) really f&#ing stupid (to an extent unbecoming to a philosopher). For that, I think it deserves public shaming.

Last edited 5 days ago by BCB

Justin Kalef

Reply toBCB

4 days ago

BCB, I’m grateful that you’ve frankly admitted something that many others seem reluctant to do: that the idea here is to punish Bonevac through a public shaming on this blog.

After reading Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed a few years ago, I find I can no longer support online shaming as a punishment. That’s not to deny that some limited shaming is sometimes appropriate as a punishment. But like any reasonable punishment, the shaming has to be carefully meted out so that it does not become excessive, and there are limits to how widespread and enduring it should be.

Internet shaming is typically permanent. and typically visible the world over. Someone who has been shamed on the internet typically has nowhere to run to, no way to start over. And the shaming process tends to attract people who find it exhilarating to join in the grandstanding and mockery, so that it becomes a sort of bloodsport of reveling in the humiliation and disparagement of the target.

Some will say that what Bonevac did is so bad that there is no need to worry about going too far. But how plausible is that? Does he deserve the death penalty? Live in prison? A life of dishonor? Isn’t there somewhere we need to draw the line? And how can we draw it in an online shaming? How many people dare to stand up to the crowd of shamers and say, “Okay, that’s enough?”

BCB

Reply toJustin Kalef

4 days ago

Again, I’m quite sympathetic to what I think is your underlying sentiment here. But to paraphrase the modern classic Quigley Down Under, this ain’t Twitter, and Bonevac ain’t Justine Sacco.

Bonevac isn’t getting dragged in front of an audience of millions, for losing his temper at a dog park or making a politically incorrect joke that was never intended to go viral. He’s getting dragged in the comments section of the Daily Nous, for a formal legal declaration clearly intended to spark controversy. And nobody’s calling for blood here: if he’s subject to any sanctions (and of course I have no idea whether that’s actually likely), it will be because he self-consciously violated the requirements of his job, not as a direct or indirect result of public pressure. So I don’t think there’s any need to worry about social death here—not all slopes are that slippery!

Justin Kalef

Reply toBCB

4 days ago

That’s a fair point, BCB: I agree with you that the stakes are lower, and that Bonevac knowingly put himself in the public eye in this way.

Still, I think we’re hardly at our best when we engage in this kind of sniping and sneering. And I think there are better ways to get one’s jollies than to line up for a chance to add a punch or kick to the beating down of a politically marginalized colleague.

Daniel Swaim

8 days ago

Are video posts allowed in the comments? I can’t think of a better potential use of that video of the gameshow host dude from Billy Madison being like, “We’re all now dumber for having listened to that.”

DoubleA

8 days ago

Man, tenure in Texas must not really be under attack if you’re allowed to declare your intentions to possibly violate Title IX and definitely violate the norms regarding TAs without consequence.

Also, taking the “rules of grammar” as demanding reverence but spelling “high heels” like it’s a stoner health spa is certainly an interesting approach.

Last edited 8 days ago by DoubleA

Jill Hernandez

Reply toDoubleA

4 days ago

DoubleA wins all the comments.

Greg

7 days ago

I support this man.

grad student

7 days ago

“I do not hire criminals or lawbreakers to serve as teaching assistants.”

I’m certain that Bonevac has already had lawbreakers as his TAs: we’ve all violated traffic law at some point.

“I declare under penalty of perjury that the facts stated in this declaration are true and correct.”

Does this mean Bonevac has already committed perjury?

BCB

Reply tograd student

5 days ago

I’m certain that Bonevac has already had lawbreakers as his TAs: we’ve all violated traffic law at some point.

More than that, I doubt there’s a philosophy department in the country where refusing TAs who smoke weed (which remains illegal in Texas) wouldn’t rule out many if not most of the best grad students.

Gordon

5 days ago

Look, they’re obviously being offensive morons who wouldn’t ordinarily deserve the attention (because this is also clearly attention-seeking behavior, and when toddlers do that, you ignore them). But. This is Texas, and they forum shopped themselves a courtroom almost 500 miles away from Austin to get in front of MatthewKacsmaryk, who’s one of the craziest of the Trump judges. There is a 100% chance he will rule in their favor if he is allowed to get to a ruling. He’ll cite the Bible, make up random additional things he doesn’t like about TAs and issue a nationwide injunction against all of Title IX. Then it will get appealed to the 5th Circuit, which will stay the injunction but then also rule in their favor and make up something about how neither students nor TAs have first amendment rights. That means it will have to go to SCOTUS, which means that Alito will have to fly more upside-down flags (sorry: Alito’s *wife*, the only woman in America who deserves privacy!) and SCOTUS will have to rule 6-3 that they only decided Bostock a few years ago and Gorsuch is still sitting *right here* and so don’t be in such a hurry! But they’ll quietly narrow Title IX in the process and maybe add legitimacy to Texas’ abortion laws too. And SCOTUS will have to decide this case instead of something actually legally worthwhile – a disarming percentage of their docket this term has been swatting down 5th Circuit malpractice.

This is a well-worn right-wing playbook, and absent compelling evidence to the contrary we should assume it is a strategic assault on Bostock and Title IX, chosen because the case will have exactly the trajectory they want. The forum shop tells you everything you need to know.

It’s also made at least one national news media outlet: https://www.salon.com/2024/06/03/texas-professors-to-fail-students-seek-abortions/

Eve

4 days ago

A dress code for TA’s, a pronoun ban, a medical inspection for excused student absences…what more could 2 privileged white guys do to make themselves obnoxious & ridiculous?

Eve Levin

4 days ago

These two professors have announced their intention to violate university rules and professional ethics. If they actually do so, the university will have ample grounds to charge them with misconduct and the faculty hearing committee will have ample grounds to find them guilty.

Michel

3 days ago

Can we call this what it is, already?

Vice signalling.

Jamie Dreier

3 days ago

Justin Kalef;

The text blocks were going to get too skinny, so I’m answering in an independent comment.

What I meant, when I wrote

the false-for-centuries claim that singular ‘they’ is ungrammatical

is that it has been perfectly grammatical for centuries to use ‘they’ with singular antecedent. The rules of grammar areconstitutiverules, not regulativerules! The ‘authorities’ you’re talking about (if I understand you) are just giving style advice. I was talking about the actual rules of English grammar.

Philosophers are particularly sensitive to the problem of ambiguous pronouns, maybe because we have a bottomless supply of them (which we call ‘variables’). To disambiguate “My dad told his coworker that he was the best driver in the company,” try using ‘they’ to refer to the coworker. That’s style advice.

Some changes are, of course, for the worse. It’s entirely possible that our language was better when ‘you’ was only plural. Men make their own grammar, but they do not make it just as they please.

Justin Kalef

Reply toJamie Dreier

2 days ago

Thanks for the reply, Jamie. That’s helpful.

As I see it, assuming your constitutive/grammar vs. regulative/style dichotomy, the rule about ‘they’ being plural will come down on the side of grammar, not style. But that doesn’t in itself fix what we are obliged to do with ‘everyone’, ‘anyone’, etc. I interpret most of the writers throughout history who have used ‘they’ in those cases as thinking that the plural pronoun is appropriate there. After all, it still seems counterintuitive to many people that ‘everyone’ should be singular.

By contrast, I would certainly not use ‘they’ in the case you raise: It’s true that, as you suggest, “My dad told his coworker that he was the best driver in the company” could plausibly taken as a report that the father was boasting, when in fact he may have been complimenting the co-worker and saying nothing about his own driving. But substituting ‘they’ for ‘he’ doesn’t just fail to resolve the ambiguity for me (for all I know, the speaker may be indicating that the father likes to be referred to in the singular as ‘they’), but it grates as the violation of a grammatical norm. A sentence that begins “My dad told his coworker that they…” indicates that the subject of the father’s comment will be plural, and I prepare to figure out what that plural subject is. Only when I come up with nothing as the sentence continues do I recover and miss a step turning to the alternative hypothesis that ‘they’ is being used in the singular. I have seen the endlessly-reposted instances of Jane Austen, etc. using ‘they’ for ‘anyone’ or ‘everyone’, but I cannot recall any instance of her or any other great author using ‘they’ in something like the case of the father’s coworker.

You might respond that I, in seeing this as a matter of grammar rather than style, am confusing a regulative matter with a constitutive one. After all, once I hear the phrase ‘they were the best driver,’ I have enough information to realize that the speaker means to use ‘they’ to refer back to a singular antecedent. Therefore, the speaker’s meaning is conveyed by the sentence alone, which some may see as evidence that the speaker must not have violated a constitutive rule: otherwise, how would the reference been possible?

I don’t know whether that’s your basis for thinking that the rule against singular ‘they’ is stylistic rather than grammatical: if I’ve got it wrong, I’d be interested in learning what your argument is. But if that is your reasoning, then I just don’t think it makes the distinction. For instance, suppose that someone writes the following sentence:

“Yesterday I eats only one bananas”

There are four errors here: ‘eats’ is in the present tense, ‘eats’ is only the correct form for a third-person singular subject, ‘bananas’ is plural, and there is no final punctuation mark in the sentence. All four of these are unquestionably(?) problems in grammar, not merely style. But I would still be able to understand from the sentence that the speaker had eaten only one banana on the previous day.

These four sorts of errors seem to me very similar to a case in which someone says of me, “My philosophy prof tried their best to learn our names.” The hearer can sort out what is going on, but that doesn’t make the sentence grammatically correct.

Jamie Dreier

Reply toJustin Kalef

2 days ago

The example you give, with ‘eats’, is obviously ungrammatical. That’s not stylistic advice, it’s just information about the syntax of English. Right? But singular ‘they’ is grammatical. (Today in more forms than in bygone centuries; I thought I’d made it clear that I agreed with ‘A Grad Student’ about that part.)

All the stuff about avoiding ambiguity is style advice. Are we agreed on that? A lot of self-styled grammarians give out style advice but declare it to be dictated by grammar. We’re less likely to get confused if we keep them straight. That’s why I broached the distinction.

Of course, I’m fine with (what I understand to be) your report that ‘they’ can’t get definite singular antecedents in your… dialect, or idiolect, or whatever. Many years ago, my freshman roommate seemed to me to speak exactly the same dialect as I did – he grew up in New Jersey and I in New York – until he told me “I’m taking Ec10 anymore.” I was dumbfounded. It wasn’t an error! It turns out that in parts of Jersey, positive polarity ‘anymore’ is grammatical!

Justin Kalef

Reply toJamie Dreier

2 days ago

“All the stuff about avoiding ambiguity is style advice. Are we agreed on that? A lot of self-styled grammarians give out style advice but declare it to be dictated by grammar. We’re less likely to get confused if we keep them straight. That’s why I broached the distinction.”

I agree with those things. I just don’t see your basis for saying that “singular ‘they’ is grammatical.”

The only case I recall seeing, anywhere, for singular ‘they’ being grammatical is a long list of instances in which people have used ‘they’ in the singular (in most historical cases, again, not even to refer to a specific person but just to refer back to ‘everyone’, ‘someone’, or ‘anyone’). But I don’t see how one is meant to get a grammatical ought from that empirical is. It doesn’t follow from the fact that many people have said something that it’s grammatical — do you agree? And if you do agree, then what is your basis for asserting that singular ‘they’ is grammatical?

It is hard for me to think of anything more central to grammar than morphology and agreements in tense, number, and so on. The fact (or at least, I take it to be a fact!) that the third person singular personal pronouns are he, she, and it while the plural one is they appears very much to be a grammatical one, not a stylistic one.

That’s not to say that there cannot be any grounds for speaking or writing ungrammatically in some cases. For instance, while my way of handling the case you gave of the co-worker, I would be inclined to keep things strictly grammatical by saying, “My father complimented his co-worker for being the best driver in the company,” while for you it may seem preferable to take a liberty with the grammar and just use ‘they’ for the co-worker. But you are saying more than that this is a defensible lapse in grammar for the sake of the style you prefer: you’re insisting that there is no lapse in grammar at all. I’m puzzled by what makes you feel that using ‘eat’ for ‘ate’ or ‘bananas’ for ‘banana’ are grammatical faults but that ‘My professor tried their best’ is not one.

Julian

Reply toJustin Kalef

1 day ago

Verily, ’tis like the erudite Thomas Ellwood said about the agreement betwixt number and person.

“The Corrupt and Unfound Form of Speaking in the Plural Number to a Single Person (YOU to One, instead of THOU ; ) contrary to the Pure, Plain and Single Language of TRUTHTHOU to One, and YOU to more than One) which had always been used, by GOD to Men, and Men to GOD, as well as one to another, from the oldest Record of Time, till Corrupt Men, for Corrupt Ends, in later and Corrupt Times, to Flatter, Fawn, and work upon the Corrupt Nature in Men, brought in that false and senseless Way of Speaking, YOU to One ; which hath since corrupted the Modern Languages, and hath greatly debased the Spirits, and depraved the Manners of Men.”

Justin Kalef

Reply toJulian

1 day ago

Ah yes, the well-worn implied argument by analogy between singular you and singular they.

It’s very satisfying to throw out supposedly knock-down arguments. Unfortunately, they don’t fit in easily with a sincere exploration on the issues.

I hope I can trust that someone else — maybe you, Julian — will put in a little work and mention some of the relevant differences between the two cases, historically considered.

Julian

Reply toJustin Kalef

1 day ago

Prescriptivism is silly, is the point.

Jamie Dreier

Reply toJustin Kalef

1 day ago

It doesn’t follow from the fact that many people have said something that it’s grammatical — do you agree? And if you do agree, then what is your basis for asserting that singular ‘they’ is grammatical?

It doesn’t “follow”? You mean, it isn’t a logical consequence?
It doesn’t follow from the fact that it’s June that it won’t snow in New Jersey tomorrow, either. But that’’s a pretty good basis for asserting that it won’t

Obviously, we don’t expect a deductive proof here – but the fact that an impressive array of the best writers of English use it is extremely good evidence.
(By contrast, nobody ever gives any evidence that singular ‘they’ is ungrammatical.)

Justin Kalef

Reply toJamie Dreier

5 hours ago

I submitted a response to this, but it hasn’t appeared here. Anyway, Jamie, this already gives me an indication of the thinking on the opposing side. Thanks!

Prudence

2 days ago

I’m not too familiar with Bonevac‘s personal political views. He comes across as a conservative and sometimes as an institutionalist.

He seems to switch between libertarianism and legality. On the one hand, he thinks the US government is overstepping its authority over him and other professors. On the other hand, he won’t hire TA’s who don’t follow US and Texan laws and his own rules.

It’s okay for him to challenge the US government and laws but not okay for TA’s to do the same. Would he be okay if TA’s started suing him? He’s playing with fire here since grad students or anybody else can counter sue him.

Obviously I think his actions are immoral. But intellectually he failed to see that the same legal action can be used against him.

Matthew Murphy

2 days ago

I’m not a professor, but a high school teacher in a district where teen pregnancy is rampant. Students on maternity leave are automatically excused from having to attend class and from having to do work. Other than that, the only way I excuse students from having to do work is if they have a concussion (or post concussion syndrome) or are in a coma (which thankfully hasn’t happened yet). Of course, if a student had cancer they would almost certainly take a leave of absence from school so they would no longer be in my class, but if they still came to school I would do my best to be accommodating. I do not wish to sound like a heartless monster and I recognize the massive difference between teaching HS and college- I’m basically a babysitter- but the expectation is that you come to class everyday.

All that is to say, the headline is pretty reasonable, what isn’t reasonable is that he wants to differentiate between an elective and “medically necessary” abortion. That’s none of his business and makes it a political policy instead of an attendance policy.
I also like dress codes. My district does not have one and it is a disaster. My (young) female coworkers are the most vocally repulsed by it, although I suspect others feel the same way but are extremely uncomfortable having these conversations with students. Obviously the expectation of TAs is to dress professionally and I’m sure the TAs know that coming to class or hosting office hours in drag is not appropriate. Why he felt the need to throw himself into the culture war is beyond me.

Instead of this miniature manifesto, if he had just been less of an agitator and said things like what I wrote below, he would’ve been fine. Furthermore, if he had added the sentences after “//” people might have considered him a good liberal and close ally:

I will call every student by their first name. If there are multiple students with the same first name I will use your last initial or point (whichever you prefer). // I will make every effort to learn your names as quickly as possible so all students feel seen and comfortable.
I will not excuse any absence unless I am legally required to by Texas state law. // Because many students (especially those that are neurodivergent or have a history of interrupted learning) might not be comfortable participating in class, I place ultimate importance on course attendance.
I vigorously support the rights of my TAs and students to dress however they wish in their personal lives, but everybody (including myself) will be required to wear appropriate attire when in class and in office hours. // I recognize the power dynamics that have plagued academia and as such I wish to ensure a safe space for everybody.

Philosopher: Missed Class to Get an Abortion? Not Excused. - Daily Nous (2024)

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