Superbia: unreasonable, inordinate self-esteem (one of the seven deadly sins); an unpardonable sin entailing a total loss of grace. What are the forces that lead to the phenomenon of “mobbing,” and is superbia one of them? On leaving the Iowa Writers Workshop early in my career, I was aware of a common characteristic of its graduates: a kind of unalloyed barely perceptible arrogance that attends a career in poetry, as improbable as it might turn out to be. This is a learned trait that could be passed down from mentor to eleve, or it might be originary with one’s mother’s milk. I would say now that my mentor in poetry possessed it to a striking degree; did his mentor pass it on to him? Something of the risk of poetry and its glory as well comes with the wager of that stake, it must be said. Subordinate to it: vestigial attributes that must be converted, as from lead to gold, in making the poet and their art. But what occurs when that quality—pride—along with ambition, competition—enter an environment of others, making their way and striving to the top? This may be the fundamental failing of academia: sins of pride; quickness to take offense and to give it; a process of self-purification or debasement (risking total lack of grace). It is a hidden motive in the following accounts, not exactly pleasant but instructive.

Nick Fleisher

Opposed to the major actors, there are a number of minor figures who jumped on the band wagon. Fleisher was a relatively new hire in 2010 and elected chair of the Policy Committee. After the contretemps with Lindberg, my speech in the department was restricted and I had been shut down at a department meeting over a minor issue. I asked him to help with that and discussed it:

In my third and final year there I chaired the department’s Policy Committee, and BW had some issue he was very angry about, which caused him to draft a lengthy and strident email to the faculty list. He sent it to me for comment and feedback, and we ended up having a long meeting where I managed to convince him not to send the message for the entire department faculty. A minor thing, but part of the broader pattern. [“Blog”]

I complained to him about being denied speech at a faculty meeting, which was documented in the minutes. He heard my complaint. I do not recall writing a long letter about that. I did not scream at Lindberg [as he reported]; it was a heated discussion, and I am sure both our voices were raised. The emotions in the room amplified what occurred, I believe—though that is not to say the emotions did not exist.  [2019 notes]

This is trivial as “evidence”; the true “broader pattern” was the tension around speech in the department of long standing. Why shouldn’t I voice such a concern? And why would Fleisher join in the pile-on, where it preserves his feather weight of evidence years later? I suggest Superbia might be involved, or at least a kind of officiousness. It may also have been a flip-off to the department, having gotten out of there and on to a new kettle of fish.

Richard Grusin

Richard Grusin was chair of the English Department from the tragic year of 2001 until he was abruptly replaced by the Dean in 2009. He came across as a bit of a salesman with big ideas, telling you what you wanted to hear. During his first five-year appointment he moved to expand the department, which meant one or more hires almost every year. His door was open to requests of all kinds. It was funky but it all seemed to be going somewhere. With his five-year renewal a gear seemed to slip and he became, in a word, loosey-goosey. (Define this word and use it in a sentence: “In slang, loosey-goosey means very relaxed, easy-going, or informal. It can also describe something lacking precision or care, like a loosey-goosey approach to rules or a task.”)

A fatal error of Superbia on his part got him demoted back to the faculty, in a period of department crisis that led inexorably to its present state. In May 2008 I hosted an informal meeting with a professor at a major university in Germany who had been the host of my first dissertation student on a Junior Fulbright. There was the possibility of cooperating on a German-American summer exchange program, which took place and to which I helped send Wayne graduate students (30 of them, over eight years from 2009–16). When the fall rolled around, I wanted to start seeking support; the professor wrote a letter to Grusin as chair to make contact. In reply he mentioned his interest in coming to Germany and giving lectures; might something be set up? The professor was offended and forwarded me the email; I was outraged and discussed it with a senior faculty. Without other recourse, I asked Grusin for a meeting and showed him the email. He bolted from the room; I followed, saying “You embarrassed me!” He replied, “I embarrassed myself” and retracted the request. I told the senior faculty about the interaction; he told the dean; Grusin was removed as chair. Superbia going before a fall. Perhaps I should not have pushed it, however, nor gone to the other faculty.

This was nothing I intended, a grievous injury to the department. The then-current dean was a well-known bastard, hostile to the English Department and looking for an opportunity. I recall Jonathan Flatley was immediately in my office with recriminations; other members of the department never forgave me (not knowing the circumstances). This was probably a direct cause of the explosion with Lindberg and the faculty meeting that caused it, where the Americanists rallied around Grusin and I was seen as the enemy. In an overview, the crisis at the end of Grusin’s chair led directly to the bad meeting, when he was chair no longer. This was followed later that year by Lindberg’s suicide and, ultimately, the expulsion of me as bad object. Grusin’s opening when the storm hit in 2019 was to upload some choice documents from his files—”doxxing” as it is termed—which I took as an act of revenge, an apparent payback for the injury I caused him. Grusin was a wily Odysseus, however, and found a way—landing a job as Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies at Milwaukee and retiring as Emeritus. Teflon-coated, this was a person who could survive in Academia.

In uploading a raft of damaging documents from his files, Grusin likely hoped their “evidence” would be overwhelming and decisive.[1] The first was an admonitory memo after a Graduate Committee meeting to discuss a student Prospectus. This was 2006 and the topic was “Modernism and Jazz Studies,” a relatively new subfield but one to be soon populated by Brent Hayes Edwards, George Lewis, and Fred Moten. At the Qualifying Exam meeting Grusin had been skeptical of the student’s reading list—”Where’s Robert Frost,” I recall him asking. In this case, he and a recent hire I would call “Canonical Smith” decided to go after the student, and then me for over a half an hour once the student was out of the room. This was witnessed by the Graduate Director, who did nothing to stop it. The student sat in the hall and was deeply traumatized; he did not in the end continue the program. At one point Grusin said, “This isn’t a field; you made it up.” I went into the Grad Director’s office and loudly complained about the lack of respect in the meeting. He agreed with my outrage: “If anyone had said that to me I would have punched them in the face.” Grusin’s letter is a false and pathetic attempt to divert the discussion from the trauma he and Canonical Smith caused to the student.

The other uploads were from the Lindberg case, which as I have said was regrettable and which I accounted for. Grusin loaded up his testimony with as much innuendo as he could manage and falsely inflated other episodes in alarmist terms, claiming an “accelerating pattern of violent behavior” and in another email, “This behavior is clearly pathological and sociopathic.” This would have been in 2010, after his removal from the chair. But other aspects of Grusin’s tenure as chair were equally problematic, including his unequaled competitiveness, career insecurity, and lack of boundaries. When I was awarded a Senior Fulbright in 2005, his response, for instance, was “I should get one too”—as if wishes were enough. He often made similarly jaw-dropping remarks, coming out of nowhere. The most incredible gaff of many came at an early point in his tenure where he attempted to downsize its complement of lecturers, as I recorded in detail:

Winter 2002: Grusin proposes to replace all lecturers with tenure-track positions. Lecturers are members of the faculty and part of the bargaining unit (they are not adjuncts). In a meeting with lecturers, many of whom are minorities and women, Grusin says the faculty is aging and needs to be replenished with younger hires. Lecturer lines are needed for this. He says that telling them this is as painful “as the first time I had to throw a lobster into boiling water” [my emphasis]. At a department meeting, I argue forcefully against firing lecturers, citing its discriminatory impact and questions of governance: the lecturers are not a part of the faculty meeting to discuss whether they should be fired. I then write the department list claiming that firing the lecturers as a group would have discriminatory impact. In the end, [my partner, a lecturer] will take another job; two lecturers are forced out; four remain; one dies. [2010 notes]

As an instance of Superbia, it is hard to tell which is greater, Grusin calling the meeting or my contesting it. No one who was there will ever forget it. It was not an auspicious beginning, and though there were other high points under his chairship, nothing could last. I remember one occasion when me, Steve Shaviro, and Jonathan Flatley were hanging out in the conference room, on good terms. Grusin sat back and beamed at what he had in his department, along with others of course. And in truth, that is a line-up that should have produced some awesome dissertations, and new knowledge—but did not.

At bottom was a slipperiness and lack of ground; as a true “Pasha type,” Grusin was always asking everyone else what to do (hire X or Y?) but then acting as if the decision had come only from him. You go to the Pasha and kiss the ring, then we’ll see where it goes. Competing faculty would stream into his office to press their claims, confronting the row of baseball bobbleheads Grusin kept on his desk, each nodding in turn. Such overall instability went with the times: this was the “postmodern era,” where the Simulacrum was all and the Confidence Man was in court. To quote the poet, “I weep for our strangeness”—that this roiling instability was what we collectively had to deal with, and would not survive. Real contributions could not be mentioned, due to rivalry. As for the documents he uploaded, I hardly expect Grusin to take them down; they are a monument to what might have been at Wayne State, but which he could not deliver given the best of opportunities.

Bryan McCann

This is a person I never met and had only a few contacts with on email. It is clear from his narrative, however, that he knew a lot about me from the milieu of Left academics at Wayne State, around the Occupy protests. I do not recognize either of the interactions he reports (wanting to be included in a meeting; questioning a syllabus he circulated), so will not comment on them. Some passages of his overworked account deserve a response.

By the time I arrived at Wayne, his verbal attack against his colleague Kathryne Lindberg was still very much a topic of conversation. One longtime member of the faculty shared with me that he and many of our colleagues believed Watten’s treatment of Lindberg contributed to her suicide. I also learned from another colleague that Watten had taken to bragging that, after Lindberg’s suicide, all his major adversaries in the department had either left or were dead. At this time, I was also close to Marie Buck, a former graduate student at Wayne. [. . .] Her account on this page corresponds with the accounts she shared with me about his reaction to her decision to select another advisor. [“Blog”]

This vicious gossip, coming from several directions. It is absolutely false and slanderous that my argument with Lindberg “contributed to her suicide”; she was depressed for personal reasons. Marie Buck, as well, had been advertising her grievances, and McCann reports on them second hand. A final passage is worth quoting as it shows the degree to which, as a bad object, had gotten into the heads of persons I had never met.

It is rare that I am capable of intensely disliking an individual with whom I have only interacted once or twice. But I have heard too much about Barrett Watten’s treatment of the vulnerable people among him —especially women in the academy—to regard him as anything less than a predatory presence. I have also spoken to prominent members of the poetry community who feel deep contempt for Watten because of his behavior. Thus, this man’s reputation is broad in scope and, for many, outweighs the value of any contributions he has made to poetry or English. As Watten’s litany of victims grows, he will surely become a growing liability for the English program at Wayne State and for the university as a whole. [“Blog”]

This is account is a fantasm, projected on “an individual with whom I have only interacted once or twice.” Perhaps from one or two emails I sensed something like this was going on, and responded defensively. Who knows?

I have little memory of Bryan McCann, nor the group he mentioned. He reports a general atmosphere of hostility toward me among left professors about 2012-13 (well after Lindberg’s suicide in December 2010). It is false that I characterized their group as “Stalinist”—not a word I use lightly. Searching email, I find only announcements of events for this group, in addition to his own syllabus. [. . .] It is false that my interaction with Lindberg had anything to do with her suicide. She was a person with a quick temper, tragic recent history, and severe health issues. It is false that I ever bragged about Lindberg’s death—this is slander. The rest of this entry is pure projection and gossip, very much influenced by the small group of Left professors who disliked me at the time. [2019 notes]

Tracy Neumann

Tracy Neumann was a former professor in the History Department on the fast track to success but who plays fast and loose with facts. In 2016 I started a working group on historical monuments in Berlin and Detroit, based on my experience of the Open Monuments program. Tracy was the director of a student from the German program who was interested. We had several meetings and I was optimistic about continuing. The third meeting, however, was on the same day as a protest against the 2016 Trump election, at which I had agreed to speak. I summarize as follows:

This is an entirely inaccurate and false account of the events of the 2016 anti-Trump teach-in. I was asked to present on anti-fascist politics and the concept of the “authoritarian personality” in the aftermath of Trump’s election. During the Q&A a student asked a confusing question about why one would vote for Clinton or Trump. I said, somewhat dramatically, that something must be wrong with voters who could vote for someone who had made the famous remark about “grabbing women by the [P-word].” In quoting Trump directly , I evidently shocked some of the audience. Tracy Neumann’s husband approached me after my talk and berated me, saying  that I had offended everyone in the room. I tried to get away from him and he pursued me out of the room; I felt physically aggressed upon. Later, Tracy encountered me in the hall and I fled to the men’s room, where I stayed for several minutes. When I came out, she was waiting for me, seeking a confrontation I believe. I asked her what was up with her husband? We had a mildly heated exchange; at this point graduate student Tara Forbes stumbled into the conversation. Tracy’s lack of account of her husband’s role makes this narrative entirely distorted; it is also false that I was on any tenure and appointments committee. I tried to continue our working group, an effort she characterizes in the most suspicious manner possible. [2019 notes]

Neumann relates my effort to continue the group and get past the interaction, which was begun by her husband, continued by her, and accelerated by Forbes—a preview of the rolling dynamic that would lead to the mob. Her husband I recall as a piece of work—a lumbering fellow who literally chased me out of the room on the occasion. Evidently I was a target of some animosity for him. Neumann needed to cover up for his behavior; when I tried to get things back on track, she emailed saying she saw no reason we could not function as colleagues—another lie in her account.

At the time I was up for tenure and my partner was in a contingent position at the university, and I remember being really worried that if news of a conflict with a full professor in another department made its way to the dean’s office, it could be bad for our job security. While Barrett never threatened any retribution toward me or my partner, his actions at the teach-in and his reputation for retribution toward students made me afraid of what he might do, particularly since I knew that he sat on the college promotion and tenure committee that year. [“Blog”]

The mention of tenure, contingent employment, and the dean are a good index of what is going on here. Neumann’s husband had acted out in a threatening manner at the teach-in, and this was a threat to her. Everything else builds on that kernel of paranoia, including the false claim that I was on any tenure committee. This is how the tenure system (and contingent employment, or being a graduate student) gets into people’s heads; its rivalrous insecurity is the true accelerator of “what goes around” and takes on a life of its own.

Donnie J. Sackey

This popinjay—a compositionist who has since left our department for the University of Texas—puts up the most flagrantly false account of the entire lot. I will quote it in its entirety:

I don’t want my silence to be seen as complicity. Watten was one of three faculty who made my first year at WSU horrible. It is true that he is hostile and intimidating. I knew about these allegations. I was often aghast at the inability to contain him. I stand with the students. One of the most humiliating experiences as a faculty member was how he and another faculty member attacked me and another colleague (a woman of color) during a meeting. The other white faculty members sat quietly. Some reached out afterwards to talk about how racist it was. [“Blog”]

I had no interaction with Sackey during his first year at Wayne State. He must have mistaken me for someone else. I did have one conversation with him, shortly before he left, where he went off about a former chair as racist. He had a quick trigger with such remarks. The meeting he reports concerned whether the department should require foreign languages for the Ph.D. The compositionists wanted to get rid of the requirement; literature faculty wanted to keep it. At the meeting Sackey pulled the race card and argued that teaching foreign languages was Eurocentric. I responded by saying it would be good to have non-European languages such as Arabic and Chinese more often taught (we do have courses in Arabic). His argumentation was absurd and without merit, and that extends to his participation in the pile-on campaign—which he simply did to get off on before he got out of here. Superbia. 

Links

[1] Spreading false rumors or circulating sensitive information are categorized as bullying in the Provost’s Statement (here). Beyond that, Grusin’s uploading of documents from his chair’s file to denigrate a faculty with whom he has a grudge is unprofessional to the highest degree. Violating that standard compares to the violence of Jonathan Flatley’s upload of his narrative, for similar reasons.

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Page 12.1, “Literary Contexts I”
Page 12.2, “Literary Contexts II”
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