I Encounter Pomp-ass Men Out of Town

Over the weekend, I went to a conference. At the conference, a friend invited me to a dinner with some of her old graduate school colleagues. I had a nice time until the end of the evening, just before we all left, when she introduced me to one of these colleagues saying, "you both know Person X." Person X was a friend of mine who used to work at the colleague's school. The colleague did not like Person X, and proceeded to attack Person X in a surprisingly vituperative way. I'm not sure that I deserve gold stars for my reaction, since the most honorable thing to have done would have been to tell the dude to fuck off, but I was too busy trying to be nice and to not make anyone feel uncomfortable. (Damn southern upbringing!) So, I write another letter wisely not sent:

Dear Ass. Prof. Friend of a Friend,

Perhaps you don’t remember me. I was the woman at the conference dinner, the one at which you were surrounded by many old friends and colleagues while I was simply a guest of the organizer. You may remember that you spoke to me with great schadenfreude of someone whom your department fired several years ago. The official expression is usually “contract not renewed,” but you chose to use the term “fired,” and to say many unpleasant, potentially libelous, and vaguely racist things about this person.*

Perhaps you did not realize that the person whom you so gleefully slandered was my friend. After all, the friend that you and I share was not clear on that point and I was not particularly aggressive in stating my position because I did not want to make either you or her feel uncomfortable in this rather awkward situation. Instead, I tried to steer us away from the subject of my friend (the one for whom you clearly have no respect), without highlighting the awkwardness that I felt; but you were apparently clueless to my endeavors. In that light, let me enlighten you on a few points.

First, when I said, “I’ve heard both sides of the story, and it seems like this was just a case of a very bad fit,” I was politely suggesting that the matter is closed for discussion. I was not inviting you to elaborate gleefully upon your distaste for my friend nor to try to pump me for information about what he might have said about your department.

Furthermore, with the same statement, I was (perhaps too subtly) indicating that I have heard an interpretation of events that does not reflect well upon the behavior of people in your department. I did not want to cause embarrassment to you or to criticize you because I really only have 2nd and 3rd hand information, and this was not my debate to enter. I just wanted to move to another topic without generating any hostility. Remember, you were among friends, whereas I only had one friend, who is also your friend, whom I did not want to alienate or embarrass. Yet, you continued in your line of attack, even after I repeated my position of “bad fit” and stated my sympathy with my friend, without passing judgment on the behavior of your department.

Second, you may want to consider how you appear in the big picture. My friend was at your institution for a single year five years ago. Yet, here you are, at a professional conference, speaking badly about him for no particular reason. You seem to revel in detailing his flaws and mistakes. You seem to glory in spreading false gossip about how he is incapable of keeping a job. You seem to think yourself in a position to make pronouncements about his fitness as a historian, despite the fact that your field is about as far from his as one can be and still be considered in the discipline of history. Really, who are you to decide who should or should not be a historian when none of your attacks on him had anything to do with his research methods or interpretations?

Five years ago, when the firing was fresh in his experience, he told me his side of the story. In private, with a sympathetic audience, he did not speak of the incident with the venom that you still speak of him in public with a stranger. Instead, he seemed mystified by what happened, and not a little disgusted by the way academia works, but he did not launch ad hominem attacks on anyone in your department or on the department in general. He found the whole ordeal preposterous to the point of hilarity. He was much more generous to your institution in the immediate aftermath than you are toward him half of a decade later.

Meanwhile, he has found another job in a non-profit institution that promoted him very far, very quickly, and with a much larger paycheck. Then he was recruited elsewhere. He was not “fired” as you seem to enjoy repeating. In other words, he has moved on gracefully, which you seem to have not.

Which brings me back to my point: who in this scenario comes out as the bigger asshole? The person who, at academic conferences, must continue to trash someone his institution fired long ago; or the person who was fired who has moved on? Even if my friend did do everything of which you accuse him, even if your interpretation of events is the more accurate, you are the one rehashing events in a professional setting to someone who has indicated that the person whom you are gleefully slandering is a friend and who has attempted to steer you away from the subject more than once.

I walk away from our conversation disgusted with you and your institution, not simply because the person whom you slandered is my friend, but because you proved yourself to be a vindictive, self-important jerk. You may want to take that into consideration the next time that you open your mouth on this subject, especially if the person to whom you are speaking is me.

Sincerely,
Clio Bluestocking

*My friend is black, the school is in the south, the gossip was sexual in nature, having to do with how tight he wore his clothes especially his pants, and the people doing the gossiping were white -- you do the math.