Denise Denton, Chancellor of UC-Santa Cruz, and the woman who sparked the controversy over Larry Summers' non-PC remarks about women in the top echelon of science, which resulted in his resignation after a no confidence vote by Harvard's humanities faculty, has apparently committed suicide in San Francisco. People close to her say that she was depressed about "events in her personal and professional life." With an income, as a university administrator, of close to $300,000 it's difficult to imagine that she had any serious financial worries. There's not much to say about what motivates someone to suicide, but it is certainly another strange turn in the ongoing saga of academia's capture by an obscure counter-enlightenment creed. Perhaps Armed Liberal has some comments on the role of "bad philosophy"?
[Padding added by editor to move the url out of the summary column and keep the template from breaking] I think I know why
It will be interesting to watch Team Lefty wring their hands over the "reasons" she was "driven to suicide". Are they not the party of death?
All kidding aside, it was her choice, and she made it. Her motives are really none of our business.
As a Santa Cruz alum, I've been paying close attention to this.
Right now, it's first and formost a human tragedy for her, her partner, and their families.
To say more at this point seems more callous than I'm capable of being.
A.L.
There was a similar instance where the founder of the Green Party in Europe, Petra Kelly, committed suicide. Since depression can aflict anyone, and need not even have a reason, that's certainly something I can't second-guess. But one would think that the common set of beliefs she held with others, and the sense of community that's supposed to exist in academia, would have kept someone from isolation even if they were prone to depression.
The personal aside, I should think it likely that people with a leftward ideology are more prone to suicide, but I could be wrong. The "hollowed out" character of modern leftism and the apparent "fall from grace" of what was only recently taken to be an unassailable position of moral superiority, must weigh terribly on people used to being taken far more seriously.
But I'm certainly not saying that this was the case here. I just don't know.
The left tends to be less religious that the center or right, and religious people attempt suicide less often. Whether its through fear of damnation, greater contentment with life, or just a stronger social network that condemns suicide is probably hard to say.
Good lord people, how can anyone be speculating on the political angle here?
If we absoutely must find one, this is the one I choose to find: the treatment of one's polictical opponents as objects: to be examined, dissected, ridiculed, and dehumanized even in death--even at the moment of greatest vulnerability, after a suicide--is shocking and saddening.
Dance on Zarquawi's grave; he deserves it. But this woman was, for all her faults (and I can spot many), a fundamentally decent person, not a thing, and most certainly not some kind of lesson in the perils of leftism.
First, if you read what I said I'm not speculating about what Denise's personal motivations might have been; but speculating or theorizing about suicide in general is certainly fair game. Indeed one of the fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, made quite a name for himself doing it.
Second, how is the point after suicide their "moment of greatest vulnerability"? In fact one would think they'd be pretty much beyond vulnerability at that point.
But again, I don't know what her reasons might have been, or even if there were reasons. And I so stated.
it is certainly another strange turn in the ongoing saga of academia's capture by an obscure counter-enlightenment creed.
Unless her personal motivations to suicide were tied in some way to the "counter-enlightenment creed" to which you believe she subscribed, this sentence makes no sense.
And given that the motivation for this post was the suicide of a prominent left-wing academic, I find your claim to be discussing the abstract motivations of anonymous people unconvincing.
Finally, I consider the dead more vulnerable than the living because they are unable to defend themselves. I further consider suicide to be a particularly horrible and incomprehensible form of death, far worse than cancer or getting hit by a bus. To me, suicide should be the ultimate humanizing event, which makes us less interested in their politics (not more, as is the case with this post) and more interested in obeying our mother's dictum to say nothing if we are unable to think of anything nice to say.
There are so many things in life that are sad but true.
Looking at how people I know respond to unfortunate news I have learned that saying "I am sorry" is a less appropriate response than "That's too bad." The former suggests you should feel unhappy while the latter suggests that the event is unfortunate.
It is too bad that she felt the need. It's too bad she did not have access to a helpful alternative. It's too bad that what she did earlier has delayed holding a mirror up to academia. All sad but true.
Depression often involves trivial issues. Don't look for any grand meanings here. That her mother was in the building where Denton committed suicide, at the time it happened, says a great deal. There is so much which could have been going on that speculation is almost guaranteed to be inaccurate.
My son who just graduated from UCSC says that Denton was earning respect from the faculty and students, and was very highly regarded by those in her field. UCSC is moving heavily towards becoming a research campus and Denton had ideal qualifications for that.
I should think her suicide might well have an impact regardless of what her motivations were, but to the extent that her ideology might have had some culpability that might also play a role. One needn't have certainty about the specific conditions in order for a suicide to have an impact. Indeed, as Durkheim showed, suicide is inherently self-contradictive: at the same time both a social act intended to have social consequences, and a private act as an expression of independence. For you to claim that one aspect of the act outweighs the other isn't entirely valid.
Now, as I said, I don't know that she intended to have a social impact... but it's not unreasonable to specualate that she might have... if only because most suicides do.
And again, you haven't told me why you think the moment after a suicide is the most vulnerable. That seems a blatant appeal to emotionalism. You might argue that it's sacrosanct for other reasons, but vulnerability really can't be one of them.
That seems a blatant appeal to emotionalism.
Yes, I suppose it is. And I have no shame about appeals to emotionalism at a time like this. Emotion (most particularly empathy) is nothing to be ashamed of. It can lead us to anger and destruction, but it can also save us from the excesses of cold reason. The dead in some sense cannot suffer anything more, but I personally would not deny even Hitler or bin Laden a proper burial. Nor would I deny my bitterest political opponent the right to be free from gratuitous attacks and tabloid speculation.
Perhaps it would be better to say that her family and friends are supremely vulnerable at a time like this. My phrasing may be imperfect, but my point is this: I can think of no better time to refrain from comment than when contemplating a recent suicide.
I believe it was Rob Lyman who wrote: "Finally, I consider the dead more vulnerable than the living because they are unable to defend themselves."
I'm going to resist the temptation to respond to that sentence with the greatest derision I could possibly muster right now but I am compelled to post in this thread just how absurd that sentence seems.
More vulnerable? Really?
I give up. I have to go to the airport. Feel free to engage in a derisive free-for-all at my expense, because I won't be returning to this thread again.
I hope that all those mocking me and Ms. Denton--or finding in her death yet another reason to critcize or otherwise examine the Left--are treated better in death than they seem to be willing to treat others.
"Bad philosophy," as AL has defined it, is largely about the elevation of abstract ideas over human beings. That's happening here, and I wish it weren't.
I agree with Rob. Suicide is a result of so many emotional factors that trying to make political hay out of this is grasping at straws, and also inappropriate. There are many examples of "leftist ideology" that don't involve speculating on the motives of someone you don't know.
This is like using Rush Limbaugh's painkiller addiction as a grand metaphor for "rightist ideology," or Cindy Sheehan using her son's death to propel her cause.
Sorry, Demosophist, you aren't playing fair.
"Summers' Protagonist Dies."
I think you mean "antagonist."
While Viktor Frankl would call suicide an example of "bad philosophy" in its truest sense (he was logotherapy's founder, after all), most folks see it as having too many personal variables to link it that high. Nowadays, we also know that there are sometimes inherited biochemical aspects as well, which muddies the water further.
Absent deep personal knowledge, therefore, speculation re: connections to political beliefs is both fraught with the risk of looking stupid - and below the standards we should expect of ourselves.
As to why...
Uh-huh. And just what was that worth? And the job?
A person at a top management level who appoints their unqualified love interest to a high-paying post is revealing more than just contravention of merit and fairness. They're revelaing an unstable personality that affects their judgment in the most serious matters. Homosexual, heterosecual, Democrat, Republican, male, or female - doesn't matter. This isn't a political thing. It IS a serious warning sign in a meritocratic institution or culture, however. The ridiculous bluster that followed when Denton was challenged about all this was all the confirmation one needed.
The proper and humane response to such behaviour is immediate suspension (and pending dismissal) followed by counselling. This did not happen - instead, they covered for her, let things corrode on so many levels, and waited until June 15th to put her on medical leave.
The stresses created by Denton's own behaviour in a job that was obviously way over her head cannot have been helpful. Her obviously erratic behaviour leads a reasonable person to ask how she was appointed to this position in the first place. Not to mention why the farce that followed had to be brought to an end this way, instead of by the kind of adult supervision and action one expects in an organization of UC Santa Cruz's size and prominence.
To the extent that politics and bad philosophy played a role in these flawed processes, they contributed to her death. How much? It's hard for a reasonable person to say, but events suggest it was at least a noticeable factor.
The results were tragic. And I am truly sorry for Denton's family.
As for her "partner", however - I'm a LOT less sympathetic. This was the person who, rather than refusing the appointment in the first place (the proper response) or resigning when things came to light, seemed quite happy to drag the person she supposedly loved through the resulting controversy, in order to keep that cushy job and its money. Even though she would also have been in the best position to know Denton's emotional fragility and see its effects developing.
That is not behaviour worthy of the term "love" - if she was a partner, the business sense of the term is the most appropriate one here. And a person like that gets zero sympathy from me.
Demosophist, #6:
First, if you read what I said I'm not speculating about what Denise's personal motivations might have been; but speculating or theorizing about suicide in general is certainly fair game. Indeed one of the fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, made quite a name for himself doing it.
[...]
But again, I don't know what her reasons might have been, or even if there were reasons. And I so stated.
You know what? I read what you wrote in the basenote, I read what you wrote in response number six, and I'm just not buying it. You're not speculating in the directest sense of the word, but you're directing speculation along precise lines while denying you're doing it.
There's a highblown rhetorical term for that tactic, that bring up of a topic in the act of claiming you're not bring it up. It's called a paralepsis and while it can be devastatingly effective, it's rather churlish to pull that stunt in the case of suicide.
A little decency and dignity, please.
--m.vitruvius@gmail.com
Wow, haven't been around for awhile, but this new Demosophist is quite the classy guy. Nice pick, Mark & Joe!
They're revelaing an unstable personality that affects their judgment in the most serious matters.
We're not connecting her "unstable" behavior with her attack on Mr. Summers at Harvard? At the time he announced his resignation, wasn't the consensus that he had been driven out by a hysterical peasant mob carrying firebrands storming Harvard from the outside?
Doesn't it seem that increasingly we not only need to be asking about the academic qualifications of those in charge at institutions of higher learning, but we also need to develop some sort of psychiatric litmus test for the Juan Coles, the Ward Churchills, and - now - this lady?
Been there, done that, NahnCee.
As a result of the tests, we built special prisons for these people. The inmates are very happy there, no walls are necessary, and everybody acts as his own guard. They stay there forever and ever, and never pester the parole board.
They don't become air traffic controllers or hospital administrators or nuclear power technicians, and they breed at very low levels in spite of their spirited efforts.
Lyman, Holsinger, Marcus Vitruvius, and Nahncee are flaming homophobes. Shame shame shame. You make me want to vomit. Have you no decency? Give the poor woman peace to rest, she is helpless and dead, so full of virtue. So well respected in death, you must give up your political wrangling at least for a moment. Shame.
Demosophist,
I have nothing to say on this one, nothing at all. If it were me, I'd consider closing the comments, and letting matters rest about where they are now.
I suppose that the sense of irony got to me, as well as my need to comprehend why people do this sort of thing. But the truth is that Frankl and Durkheim have a great deal more to offer in this area than any of us here. Prior to her suicide, I'd have had no qualms about suggesting that Ms. Denton was corrupted by her ideological convictions in a way directly analogous to the officialdom at Virginia State University (right down to the appointment of a sexual partner to a position of responsibility), but I suppose it's now too late for that. In a larger sense, however, I see part of a generation poised on the verge of a kind of suicide, where their original inspirations were transformative. They dared to remake the world, but no longer had the wind at their backs. Who can but grieve the inspiration and energy of reform gone awry? Or avoid seeking to comprehend it lest we follow the same path, regardless of ideology?
I think the lesson here relates directly to the ideological conflict we're involved in, but also transcends it... so that perhaps Yehudit is right that I'm not "playing fair." I just don't want to find myself playing it safe. Yehudit is a very kind person, and I recall she had the same impulse regarding Nick Berg's father. She was also probably right then, but my own flaws didn't allow me to give him a pass... and I suppose that even though we disagree it's possible that we're both partly right. (And I'll also let the term "protagonist" stand. She was certainly a leading character in that drama.)
At any rate I won't shut down the comments unless they get really unruly, and I doubt that'll happen. I'm not averse to discussing, in a general sense, the conditions that might be leading part of my own generation toward suicidal depression. And I've commented before that there's a Christopher Hitchens syndrome with some of us who believe we've made the right decision, but find it in such grievous tension with our hopes and dreams for society that we dive headfirst, into a bottle. At least that decision has the potential to be reversible, eventually. The real tragedy of Denise Denton is that whatever her mistakes are, they can no longer be redeemed.
The victim is not immune to criticism, especially when the victim is first and foremost self-victimized. Victims do not have absolute moral authority. Victims do not become heroes merely because they were victims. I've heard some communities feel differently about that.
Making yourself a victim should not win approval and sympathy in any sort of functioning healthy society.
"To me, suicide should be the ultimate humanizing event..."
That is an utterly insane statement, and anyone that makes it should step back for a moment of serious self-reflection. I've very little doubt that one of the things that motivated this poor lady to kill herself was the belief that after doing so she'd win people's (now utterly useless) sympathy. Ms. Denton has just made the most blatant appeal to emotionalism possible in this increasingly sick culture.
Suicide is however the ultimate dehumanizing event. You go from being a person to being a corpse.
Likewise, I really don't care how I'm treated after I die. I will be beyond your ability to hurt. I will have gained either invulnerability or the abyss. Either way, it won't matter what you think of me.
Let's bury Denton. Let's grieve with her loved ones. Let's offer shoulders to cry on and compassion for the living. But sometimes true love involves something other than unconditional approval. Denton has deprived us of much of the opportunity to act positively toward her, she has deprived us of the ability to offer her a hand of human friendship, and has deprived herself of the opportunity for positive action. If in this tragic circumstance we are to make her death meaningful in any fashion, it can only be by taking lessons from her death. That's all we have left, because Ms. Denton has chosen to leave human fellowship and make her last action to spit on us and then spit absolutely on her own life.
If it is any solace, its likely that she was chemically depressed, ill and not in her right mind and had no one there to catch her. Maybe she crashed so quickly no one had a chance. In any event, she's dead now.
"Lyman, Holsinger, Marcus Vitruvius, and Nahncee are flaming homophobes."
Yeah, whatever. As far as I'm concerned, that's just another example of trying to use victim status as a means of thwarting criticism. It's a gathering sickness in this country that we hate the successful and glorify the failures.
Well, I can admit when I'm wrong. I've thought it over and the term "protagonist" actually doesn't work as well as I thought it might, because Denton was really sort of a secondary character. The primary was that professor from MIT, Nancy Hopkins. But I'm not going to change the title of this post to "antagonist" because, well... it's just sort of bad form to play that kind of trick on Google.
This post was not appropriate, nor are some of the comments. Can you please remove it, out of respect for the dead?
Yours,
Wince
Wince and Nod:
"This post was not appropriate, nor are some of the comments. Can you please remove it, out of respect for the dead?"
You know, that was my first instinct too. I have nothing against say celebrating the death of Zarqawi. This post strikes me too much like a subdued celebration, personal vindication, and personal vindictiveness. That might be a fine tone in the case of the vilest of villians - people who were real enemies of and haters of human life - but the claim that Denton is comparable is pretty shaky to say the least no matter what you think of her politics or personal foibles.
But, the more I thought about it, the more I became equally bothered by the comments of the critics on the other side.
Take yours for example. I've got no real interest in respecting the dead. They are well beyond my ability to respect or disrespect, to laud or to praise. All my actions are meaningless to them. I am however interested in being respectful to the living, and the only purpose I see in repecting the dead is to respect those still living by respecting the livings still living memory of the dead. I'm very much bothered by the fact that that point seems to be utterly lost on the critics.
They say suicides come in threes. What they mean by this is that suicides seem to come in non-random clusters. One suicide tends to set off a whole series of copycat events amongst observers who are similarly troubled and depressed. I think that the obvious reason for that is that suicide appears to carry a payoff. Observers witnessing a suicide observe lots of "respect for the dead" and saying alot of nice things about the person. They see lots of people treating the suicide as "the ultimate humanizing event". They see alot of weaping and sympathy and they think they know how to make everyone feel bad for treating them (as they percieved it) badly. They think they know a way to cover up for all thier mistakes. Suicide seems so attractive in those terms.
I think we need a little more humanizing, respect, and sympathy for the living and a lot less humanizing, respect, and sympathy for the dead. I don't see how its more callous to treat the dead one way than it is to treat the living the same way.
I am strongly tempted to make another long and contriversial point here about the different ways you can profitably express love, concern, respect, and grief, but I think that's enough un-PC thoughts for the day.
I've considered the objections rather deeply, and I'm still bothered by the notion that they're attempting to impose an unreasonable taboo. Perhaps because I'm sensitive to the cutthroat jungle that's now represented by the administration of higher education it seems reasonable to ask whether this fairly unhealthy environment has something to do with suicides like that of Ms. Denton. This doesn't mean that it's not possible her suicide was unrelated to this process. But take, as an example, the unrelenting attacks on Jean R. Cobbs that I related here. These folks attempted to destroy someone's life simply because she got in the way of their little fiefdom. And the kind of money that's involved, together with the cultic sort of atmosphere that's evolved in higher ed, suggests that it's at least valid to ask these questions.
So I'm not trying to "have my cake and eat it too" as some have suggested in the comments. I'm not making any necessarily untoward suggestions about Denton herself. Indeed, in the scenario she might have been a potential whistleblower who'd had second thoughts. But imagine being either indirectly or directly threatened with the sort of retaliation that was done to Prof. Cobbs? I'm afraid higher ed is no longer the pristine collegial environment many of is believe it to be. There's a mixture of ideological cultism and greed that's causing huge problems.
If it's taboo to bring this up, where does that leave us?
And if you think this is a celebration of someone's death, you're a stupid nit.
#16, Joe, you just don't know what you are talking about.
Spousal appointments (and, in California, a gay partner counts) are absolutely routine in academia. For the record, I've held one myself (to a temporary position) and if my wife were so powerful an academic as to command another on my behalf, I would likely take it.
Indeed, I'm aware that Institution X and Institution Y got into a bidding war over one of my wife's colleagues last year and I told her than Y was going to lose even though they offered more salary because they were unwilling to make a "Partner of opportunity" offer to the wife. This was particularly egregious because the professor in question had arrived at X as the junior academic and I correctly divined that there was no way he was going to leave his wife in the lurch after she had gotten him his first job.
Now, maybe Denton's partner wasn't any good at her job. (A lot of freshmen thought that about my calculus-teaching skills.) But the union is just grandstanding here about amounts. It is absolutely the case that a spouse job has become a standard perquisite of high-level academic positions.
Pretty much the same thing is true about the renovations issue. These days a house "comes with" for a chancellor. (Not just these days: my uncle is still in the house given to him in the mid-1960s as a university president.)
Now, there has been a lot of complaint in the press about the size of UC pay packages at the top. I think it's well-founded, but it's just a mild case of the far more egregious pay packages that CEOs get these days. Conservatives, busy slashing support for the state universities, say they want the universities to be run more like a business. Well, overpayment at the top is like a business. Be careful what you ask for; you might get it.
As for this suicide, it may be some political motive, but it's more likely an episode of personal major depression that wouldn't make any sense to the more sane among us even if Denton could be revived to explain it to us.
Rest in peace.
I'm not sure what to say about Andrew's contention that spousal appointments in academia are "absolutely routine", as though that's an excuse, but it seems to me that if I've incurred the debt and hardship of obtaining a doctorate in order to compete for such a position, and it's awarded not on the basis of merit but according to some nepotistic standard, that's just corruption, whether it's routine or not. But it's also part of this milieu of corruption that has lead to the cultic aspect of higher education nowadays, and what it must be dealt with.
Moreover, the example I cited regarding the Jean Cobbs case was egregious by any standards. To displace someone with 30 years experience for no better reason than that you want to award the position to your unqualified "main squeeze" is an abuse of authority, as well as an abuse of the institutional mandate for public universities. Something like this may or may not have been the case at UC Santa-Cruz, but it is a public university.
My main concern, however, is the fact that the sovereignty and academic freedom generally granted universities goes along with the understanding that it won't be abused, either for personal or ideological reasons. And the rapid growth of activism and advocacy on university campuses, almost exclusively on the left and generally touted without shame on their own websites, is but another example of the abuse of a mandate. The AAUP tarted up a survey recently in order to bolster their argument that the public isn't really concerned about these issues, but the point is that concern is growing and the determination to do nothing about the situation will ultimately prove to be a form of institutional suicide.
"I'm not sure what to say about Andrew's contention that spousal appointments in academia are "absolutely routine", as though that's an excuse, but it seems to me that if I've incurred the debt and hardship of obtaining a doctorate in order to compete for such a position, and it's awarded not on the basis of merit but according to some nepotistic standard, that's just corruption, whether it's routine or not."
I don't agree with Andrew over much of anything, but on the issue of spousal appointments he's absolutely correct, and if you don't get then you just aren't in academics.
Scholars and professors tend to associate with other scholars and professors just as any group tends to associate with handily available like minded people, and biology being what it is you can therefore only expect that many if not most academics are married to other academics. There is nothing at all new about this. Einstein was part of a husband and wife academic team. Lavoisier was part of a husband and wife academic team. The Curies are a fairly well known husband and wife academic team. An academic career is quite unlike most other careers in that in most cases, there is only one business in a given area that employees people with your skill set (and often there are no such businesses). In modern academia, it's therefore reutine to have as a condition of your employment that they must also have a position for your spouse.
The only alternative to that is one partner giving up thier career. Academia requires pretty career driven individuals in order to have any measure of success, and therefore its simply unreasonable to assume that one partner will be willing to do that - especially when our culture does not assume that the wife is going to do so.
Real world people aren't cogs in a economic machine. Much as I am a supporter of capitalism, there are other concerns than the economic and capitalist idealism must be tempered by that knowledge.
However, all that being said Andrew is ignoring that the case in question bears little resemblence to the normal spousal appointment practices accepted in academia.
I don't suppose they could be expected to just do what people in every other profession do? Again, the idea that someone could obtain a position that I've trained and sacrificed for, simply because they're X's "life partner", seems corrupt on its face, whether it's common practice or not. Getting a position in academe is tough enough without having to worry that you'll be Xed out by someone's love interest.
Then again, I suppose it's a good way to get laid. I got a kick out of Watson's description of he and Crick's primary motivation to get to the bottom of the DNA structure. Basically it was so that they woudn't end up with "faculty wives." Heh.
Celebrim, I'm truly not aware of anything atypical in the way in which Denton's partner came into the system. It's a little unusual that the partner appointment was Systemwide and not at Santa Cruz, but when you think about it, that might have been better, reducing the possibility of conflict of interest. Her partner was also a senior professor, so that wasn't an issue.
Can you tell me what I missed?
Demosophist, I am not quite sure how you concluded that spousal hiring in academic faculty isn't replicated elsewhere. I've noticed a few major college athletics scandals where the famous coach's clueless son seems to have snuck onto the payroll, along with the father (and/or the high school coach) of the star recruit.
Nor, frankly, would I be surprised to hear of considerations like this in when lawyers or doctors are poached, any other place that both halves of a couple can be at pretty much the same point professionally. (I don't think you could have a 2-CEO family, at least not as their first marriages!)
One of my feminist friends likes to introduce me with: "This is my friend who when asked if he resented affirmative action for women said 'Yeah, the women who graduated with me cheated. Instead of relying on affirmative action they also wrote better dissertations than mine.'" But it is true, one of those women also scored a job for her husband, not near my field, and I was more talented than he was. Nor was that the only such case.
But let's get real. The most outrageous Harvard acceptances out of my prep school were alumni legacies. The world works this way all over the place, and I think it's a little odd to point to one way that universities try to keep families together as the worst offender.
Andrew:
No doubt it happens elsewhere, but not generally as a matter of course. And the argument that "that's the way the world works" isn't very impressive either. The fact is that it's not fair, whether "everyone does it" or not. Plus, the example of having written better dissertations strikes me as a reach, since a good dissertation has never been completed. :-)
I'm sure all of your arguments seem compelling, if they tend to benefit you. The point is that it's a rather biased set of justifications. And perhaps more to the point, with respect to my particular beef with academia (that it has been captured by a counter-enlightenment cult) the institutional "inbreeding" that's the obvious outcome of the kinds of practices you outline clearly creates a feedback loop that tends to exacerbate the problem. Right now the academy is in denial about all of this, and those apologists have convinced themselves it need not be addressed except in the form of denial. The longer they hold to that view, the greater the shock of the reckoning.