To the Editor:
I must respond to Grady Martin’s essay “The Problem with FIRE’s Data” (The Chronicle Review, February 12), which opens with a misleading account of Barnard’s 2022 cancellation of my course Culture in America and its subsequent reinstatement.
Martin apparently approves of FIRE’s stated aim to verify details by “rely[ing] on information provided by every person involved who’s willing to respond publicly.” I’m curious, then, why he didn’t follow his own rules by reaching out to me to get my version of events. Or why he didn’t draw on FIRE’s detailed April 25, 2023 report on my case.
Martin did consult a sketchy student web site that featured anonymous informants who falsely claimed that I had said that “some Black people had ‘given ... [me] ... permission’ to use [a slur].” I never made such a ludicrous statement. Nor did I “use” a slur. I quoted a rap lyric and it was not a slur but a term of affiliation spoken by a Black man — “nigga.”
One reason Martin may not have linked to the longer FIRE piece is that it would have undermined the contrived “revelation” of his opening: That FIRE’s brief summary of my case in its 2025 rankings was a deceptive “half truth” — that I was canceled because of my views of race — that masked the full truth: that I faced Title IX charges because I quoted the N-word. This is nonsensical. One’s approach to the N-word is not independent of one’s broader view of race. Nor did the longer FIRE account flinch from the Title IX ruckus. Moreover, there were countless other details FIRE omitted from the capsule summary because they weren’t relevant to its 2025 rankings story. Most critically, the trove of evidence to which FIRE had access made clear that my course was canceled precisely because of its viewpoint.
If Martin had probed more deeply, he would have discovered the richer story. In truth, the actual Title IX plaintiffs — just three students in a lecture class that was half students of color and which received fine evaluations — recoiled from the way I dealt with many aspects of race and politics, not least of all the tangled relationship of race and class. The provost insisted quite bluntly that I had to “change my pedagogy”; and the person with the most immediate power over my teaching admitted, “I don’t like the way you approach” race, and said I should remove the subject of race from my course.
Most glaringly, Martin seems unaware that the Barnard administration’s attack on my pedagogy actually began a full year before the N-word fracas and it was not limited to Culture in America but included my lecture course Music, Race and Identity. I was summoned to the dean’s office without explanation for what can only be described as a show trial, less Stasi than theater-of the-absurd style. The complaints were manifold: that I had referred to “illegals” (no, I quoted a Washington Post article on Trump’s Tejano support quoting two Texan-Mexican-Americans); that I had not acknowledged my white privilege in teaching about Black music and the reading list had no Black authors (no, it was full of Black authors like Leroi Jones, Nelson George, Guthrie Ramsey, Lisa Lewis, Albert Murray); that I warned that many of the popular books on antiracism lacked scholarly rigor and essentialized race; and that I had said that critical race theory violated methodological rigor by relying on a priori assertions and vast generalizations at the expense of empirical documentation.
Martin’s carelessness extends to his account of the events surrounding the cancellation of Culture in America and its return to the curriculum. His version obscures the crucial role of FIRE in protecting professors like me.
Martin writes that Barnard declined to punish me, thereby omitting the key point: the Barnard Office of Nondiscrimination and Title IX found no grounds for the charges and dismissed them. But that didn’t deter Barnard from its onslaught on my pedagogy. Martin then writes that after a pause, Barnard reinstated the course, as if mysteriously, but now with “added lessons on wokeness and free expression.” I have no idea what lessons on wokeness might be (he grabbed that from a course catalog description, which didn’t mention “lessons”). That’s a fantasy. The truth is that I did not revise my syllabus beyond the normal annual updating. For years I’ve made statements about free expression, viewpoint diversity, and why I reject concepts like trigger warnings in dealing with the volatile issues I teach. I have long dealt with the social constructions of “woke” and “deplorable” and how such schema stabilize political identities even as they distort reality.
Why, then, did Barnard reverse course? On April 25, 2023 FIRE published its report on my case which drew national attention. On May 1, I wrote to the provost, “I will not change my pedagogy. I will not change my course content. I will not ‘shift my approach’ to ‘difficult issues’ as you once put it.” I also warned that I had been subject to viewpoint discrimination. I copied all of the top administrators, the General Counsel, the head of the Board of Trustees and then-President Sian Beilock, who was making a big splash about invigorating free expression at Barnard. Days later, Barnard changed its tune. Thank you, FIRE.
Surely, FIRE like the rest of us who engage in public discourse, should not be immune to criticism and scrutiny. When they screw up, as we all do from time to time, we should call them out. But irresponsible journalism must also be called to account. As the illiberal right joins the illiberal left in threatening university speech, we can’t afford the irresponsibility of sloppy reporting. The stakes in preserving viewpoint diversity and liberal arts ideals are too serious to settle for anything less.
Jonathan Rieder
Professor of Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University
Co-Chair, Columbia Academic Freedom Council
