campusreview.com.au
“It is a little bit subjective,” he acknowledged.
Campus Review spoke with Beard about the other ethical
considerations arising from the Vogt incident.
CR: Given Vogt’s award was rescinded after photos he used in a
presentation were deemed inappropriate by conference attendees,
what are the ethics relating to the conflation of one’s professional
achievements with their perceived behavioural offences?
MB: This is a conversation that has taken place in the arts for a
long time. Some of those conversations have just cropped up
into public consciousness again because they’re talked about
in Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, where she talks about people like
Pablo Picasso, for example, who is known as this artistic genius
that was also misogynistic and had sexual relations with a minor.
These are things have been scrubbed from his identity because of
his professional achievements.
So, there has been an argument that we should separate
someone’s intellectual or creative contributions from their
character and their personality. That’s a conversation that is worth
having. But it’s harder to make that argument in this specific case,
because this man was receiving an award, and an award is not just
a recognition of the quality of your work. Otherwise, we would
give anonymous awards to the best piece of research. An award
points to you as someone who is of an exemplary standard, a role
model. That immediately brings in character.
The second point is a little bit more nuanced. If you want to
say that someone should be treated purely on the basis of their
professional activity and therefore shouldn’t be criticised, that’s
exactly the principle that this guy violated, because he took
researchers and he presented them as sexual objects. If reports
are to be believed, he reduced professionals to objects of the
male gaze.
People have stated Vogt’s actions follow a history of inappropriate
behaviour on his part. What are the dangers associated with acting
on allegations? Do you think, in the #MeToo era, this kind of action
is becoming more common?
Ultimately, what we’ve got here is public shaming. I think
there are risks whenever shame is used as a tool to manage
people’s behaviour. That’s not to say risks can’t be managed or
aren’t worthwhile.
What we’re seeing in #MeToo broadly is that power dynamics
are being reshaped. For a long time, power was used as a
way for people, primarily men, to get away with things and
silence people, including in academia. Academia is incredibly
hierarchical. There is a lot of space for power to be misused. It is
unsurprising that these things have occurred and the challenge
for academic institutions is what they are going to do to prevent
that going forward.
There can be problems when people are suddenly accused
of something that happened 10 years ago. #MeToo has revealed
that if injustice is not dealt with at the time, it becomes a
snowballing problem.
As a result of the incident, the Herpetologists’ League said it
would sign a code of conduct and form committees on diversity,
inclusivity and professional conduct. Do you think these are
effective ways of managing this kind of behaviour?
They are weapons in an arsenal, but they aren’t a silver bullet. Part
policy & reform
of it addresses structural problems of power, and certainly codes
of conduct that set very clear standards … that’s where ethics
comes to the fore.
We can help manage behaviour by focusing on how we
develop and promote people, based on their character. Which
brings us back to the question of whether we should reward
based on professional achievement or character. We should
ensure that people in power aren’t only held to account by fear
of punishment, but that they are also held to account by how
exemplary they are.
Diversity policies are helpful because, in the past, there were
certain behaviours that weren’t challenged and were rewarded
simply by virtue of the fact that the women’s voices were silent,
and they often weren’t allowed entry into the room in the
first place.
That’s one reason why it’s so important that we have inclusive
environments where different peoples’ input can be heard,
because it’s in these cloistered and siloed spaces that, over time,
very strange practices can emerge.
Could zero-tolerance policies stymie creativity or free speech?
If you are going to shame, then the thing that makes shame
useful, from an ethical perspective, is that the fear of it eventually
leads to people making good on the wrong that they’ve done and
then being forgiven.
A zero-tolerance policy is all of the shame without the
redemption. It exiles someone forever and never allows them to
make good.
Shame, traditionally, has worked in small communities where
the same community that shamed the person also helps them to
redeem themselves. Communities that operate on shame would
want to look to the ways in which they can foster that spirit of
redemption. I think that is one of the challenges.
This is one of the challenges, because the #MeToo movement
has arisen as the tide that has broken the dam wall. So much has
A zero-tolerance policy is all of the shame
without the redemption. It exiles someone
forever and never allows them to make good.
been held back for so long that there is a lot that is now rushing
through in a flood.
However, the danger is that because it is moving so fast, there
may be collateral damage in terms of reputations. There may
be complex situations that require shades of grey, and I think
that we’re beginning to see the movement and the conversation
accounting for that. Situations like the Aziz Ansari case. People
started to say, “Well, this might be a little bit more complicated
than the Harvey Weinsteins and the Bill Cosbys of the world.”
Whether or not this falls into that category without seeing
the specific images is hard to know, though it seems like this
person was well known within his community for a particular
kind of behaviour. So, it needs to be a wake-up call for those
within academia at large and those within the herpetology
community specifically. ■
13