There are several things that make the character assassination of Judge Kavanaugh morally repugnant to me. One of these is this politically correct lynch mob mentality, leftists who loudly confronted most recently Sens. Cruz and Flake separately over support for Kavanaugh. Another element is the fact that the opposition to Kavanaugh is a below-the-surface political vendetta that had blocked Kavanauth's initial nomination to the courts for almost 3 years almost 15 years ago (chiefly because he was involved in the Clinton impeachment process). The Dems on the Judiciary Committee ideologically opposed Kavanaugh from the get-go, without a pretense of impartiality before the hearings and then, in a last minute desperation tactic, personally attacked Kavanaugh with baseless smears (I have been a victim of these types of dishonorable tactics in different contexts). Then there's this whole "recovered memory" junk science. People's lives have been ruined over false accusations. It's all but impossible to prove a negative, i.e., that something didn't happen. (A number of these dubious allegations came out during the Catholic priest sexual misconduct allegations several years back.
Recall registered Democrat Ms. Ford's opposition to Kavanaugh was political; she, in fact, has never filed charges in Maryland, where it might have triggered an alert during any of 6 background investigations during his work in Washington and the courts. She did not file a statement with the committee chairman but with her Dem Congressman and Sen. Feinstein. She requested anonymity in a country committed to due process and the right of the accused to confront his accuser. (Oh, yes, the political whores like Charles Schumer will point out, "Hey, this isn't a court; this is the US Senate." Damn right, you uncivil, hypocritical bastard. But I've personally seen the Democrats go after 3 SCOTUS nominees, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and now Brett Kavanaugh. It offended my sensibilities so much, I left the Democratic Party. I've never seen Republicans do anything comparable (and I'm no longer a Republican).
The BEST you can say about Ms. Ford is maybe she had been assaulted but by someone else. As I've written before, I've personally read thousands of academic psychology articles. Not to go into the weeds here, but I wrote an unpublished article on MIS measures, like computer user satisfaction. The creator of one such measure used a statistical test of independent observations to argue the completeness of his measure/ His data? Interviews with a small number of interviewees, presumably in the Arizona area. He was arguing that the odds that his sample did not identify a significant factor in computer user satisfaction was near-zero. It was a highly unusual argument that I had never seen in the psychology literature, and it was utter nonsense because of the conflated nature of memory recall: they hardly amounted to independent events that the statistical test use required. I have not reviewed the literature on the construct since leaving academia, but at that time, I was unaware of a single other MIS researcher making that criticism. My paper was rejected in personal terms; I suspected the editors farmed out the reviews with people who were vested in the measures I was criticizing. As a junior (nontenured) professor, I was not trying to alienate other MIS academics. I was concerned that many of the peer reviews of the studies I was critiquing had been made by people not familiar with measure design and validation. Many scholars were using these measures not aware of any legitimate critiques. I simply wanted to start a long-overdue conversation. Some of the reviewers raised points really not in the scope of the article, like instead of criticizing other people's measures, I should constructively devise my own; when I pointed out reported Cronbach's alpha was likely an artifact of poor questionnaire design, I got slammed for not discussing more recent psychometric heuristics since Cronbach's alpha (not that the reviewer suggested any); I personally regarded this as a sham rationalization for recommending its rejection, obfuscating the reviewer's agenda. Not one of the reviewers specifically disputed any of the points I made in the article.
So yeah. Whereas I was not involved in memory research, I was far more informed on the topic than most in academia and of course the general public. And Ms. Ford's rejection that her "recovered memory" could be mistaken is simply not credible. And some memory researchers have paid a steep price in politically correct attacks on their research. And this is a point few others I've read: that we know convicted rapists have had their sentences overturned based on compelling DNA evidence. Those convictions were based on the testimony of women identifying the alleged perpetrator. Ms. Ford isn't even alleged rape, but a self-described assault. An assault which she didn't mention to friends or family, which she didn't record details in a personal journal. She has tried and failed to get support from friends in high school and college that she mentioned the incident to them.
One of the things that really pissed me off was how the Senate Democrats, in the wake of Kavanaugh's passionate response to the Ford smear, was that he lacked the temperament to serve on SCOTUS. This man has gone through one of the most scrutinized nomination processes in history--and at the last minute vaguely specified, unsupported decades-old allegations are made in the middle of MeToo hysteria, death threats are being made at him and his family. Even Clarence Thomas didn't go through this hell. His judicial temperament, which the Dems don't acknowledge, is a matter of public record over a decade on the courts.
I've never gone through this process, but I want to reprise some stories I've written about my initial professor appointment at UWM. I had already made up my mind I wasn't going to stay at UWM my first semester, an incident I described recently. (DH and his doctoral student DM (who I had befriended) were playing keep away with the latter's dissertation proposal, which made me more, not less curious. DM was trying to attain ABD status to go into the academic job market. The proposal must be frozen before the defense; I checked out a copy and found it shockingly undeveloped and incompetent. I advised him to withdraw the proposal and he refused. Soon thereafter I found myself needing a ride home from one of DH's consulting clients giving a dog-and-pony show. DH basically told me he had named a well-known academic PN with marching orders to take me out at the proposal defense and then reminded me I didn't have a vote in my own tenure process. The chance of me winning tenure with opposition from my area's senior profs was near-zero. It was a breathtaking violation of professional ethics.)
But a second incident just completely nauseated me. I had gained PhD faculty status (at the time which had to be earned, but soon thereafter they made a rule change that conferred this status after year 1), which meant among other things I could participate in the PhD comprehensive exam process. In essence, I was a tie-breaking vote among 5 professors; DH/HJ and GH/KK basically did not get along. CK, the student who drove the WB dog-and-pony show described above, was really more of an accounting student, but UWM didn't have an accounting PhD program, so he was going for an MIS doctorate. Before I joined the PhD faculty, CK had failed his first of up to 2 qualifying exams. He wanted to immediately go for it; the other faculty advised him, to no avail, to take more time before going up again. He was well-liked by all the faculty, including myself.
He came to my office, trying to brown-nose me into the question I would be allocated. He tried flattering me, telling me he had read all my published papers and liked them. (I was doing research on documentation and more broadly human factors/ergonomics in IS, at that point a minor emerging area in MIS research.) I was very proud of the 3 questions or so I brought to the exam committee; they were more open-ended questions that were meant to see how he would approach a problem as a researcher. There weren't necessarily right or wrong answers, but I would expect him to summarize some key studies in the literature, maybe propose a research hypothesis, operationalize a study, etc. I realized the other 4 profs may have liked my 3 questions, but none of them were going to give up their (predictable) question. So they selected one of mine.
Long story short, CK bombed the exam (and my question in particular). And this was with DH/HJ trying to game the scoring process in favor of the student. (For example, we had a scoring mechanism like dropping the high and low scores, and DH/HJ would both submit inflated scores on an answer, knowing it would boost his score. Bur it wasn't enough; DH told GH/KK that one of them would have to tell CK he failed the exam because DH wasn't going to do it. GH/KK backed off. I was furious because this was blatantly an abuse of process and professionally unethical. From my perspective, CK had made a decision to take the exam against everyone else's advice; he was responsible for his own bad decisions.
So the evil 4 senior professors made an unholy decision: HJ was the chair of the PhD Program committee (the name might be slightly different). So they suspended the committee, HJ pushed through an option they could admit a conditional pass with remedial work. The committee resumed session and issued CK a conditional pass. This goes beyond equal protection; they changed the rules of the game after it was played. I jokingly asked GH afterwards what would have happened if CK had my personality. Without hesitation, GK said that he would have been done. This was unfair to students held to a higher standard. What I realized at this point my colleagues were all morally corrupt bastards; the idea of spending the rest of my career with colleagues I didn't respect was nauseating.
There is a brief follow-up anecdote to the incident after I left UWM. I went to a purported interview screen in an unusual open area. (Most interviews were held in closed rooms.) (It briefly crossed my mind that this was no coincidence, but I shrugged off the paranoia: maybe he was waiting for his own interviewee or taking a breather.) Somehow the interviewer brought up my UWM experience. This was always a touchy subject, because no employer wants to hire someone who is perceived as a problem, chronic complainer; there were some positive aspects to my UWM experience, particularly teaching graduate classes, the main reason I picked UWM over BGSU/Ohio. At some point, I think mentioned the CK incident. I briefly passed by DH after the interview; I had no desire to talk to the son of a bitch; he talked loudly enough for me to hear, something to the effect CK had gotten nowhere since I left. No shit! The bastard had been eavesdropping on the whole conversation! The whole interview had been a setup for him to find up what I was saying about him and UWM. I, of course, never looked back after I left UWM. I didn't know what happened after I left UWM, and I didn't care. It had nothing to do with CK personally. It had to do with a corrupt, manipulated process that violated equality under policy.
So I've told this story of what happened that led me to leave UWM when I did. There are exceptions to this general pattern, and some things may have changed since I left academia in the 90's. But usually you go up for tenure in 6 years and gain tenure in year 7 or year 7 is the terminal year of employment, a year to find another academic job somewhere. (Ironically tenure is a concept that would have been intended for me, like when I got rebuked on that unpublished paper by the powers that be.) So in my case I signed an initial 3-year contract. What happens is you to go up for a 3-year contract renewal, which is normally a formality. In the unlikely event your renewal is denied, you have the final year of your original contract to find another job in academia.
I made a fatal decision to teach undergrad COBOL in my second year, surrendering one of my cherished graduate courses (DSS) in the process. There were some minor research motivations, like testing the readability of ANSI standards, but the ANSI-85 Standard had some new support for Structured Programming constructs. The business school had Microsoft COBOL licenses, but Microsoft had not upgraded its software; I assigned a textbook which provided a floppy disk restricted use license for ANSI-85 compatible Ryan-McFarland COBOL. The Administration was overjoyed to hear one of its faculty take on a service course--until they learned that I wouldn't be using their paid licenses (as if it was my fault Microsoft hadn't upgraded its compiler). There were other complications, e.g., the student programmer aides in the computer labs weren't familiar with the new standard.
I've mentioned part of the story before and I won't go into detail here, except to note that a group of malcontent students appeared at my office early in the semester to demand I postpone the first due date "or else". I thought they were panicking' it was literally 2 weeks before the first assignment was due (and I never gate out an assignment it took me more than 30 minutes to write myself). I always reserved the right to modify the due date if it looked like an issue for most students by the deadline, but I didn't want to set a precedent, I don't respond well to extortion, and they repeated their threat.
The first and second computer assignments had gone past without incident; I was aware my contract renewal was coming up. To me, I had no interest in going up for tenure at UWM, but a 3-year renewal gave me more flexibility in leaving UWM. I had to teach the day of my hearing (which I didn't attend) and had gone back to my office in the evening to work on my lecture notes when I found a thick folder of anonymous student complaints. I shit you not---the folder was full of absurd nonsense like "Prof. Guillemette's chalkboard behavior is so bad, I feel like screaming if I have to endure it one day longer". These jerks were demanding that the committee deny my contract renewal.
The last-minute sabotage of my renewal was somewhat similar to what happened to Kavanaugh. I had asked the committee to respond to an intentionally late response designed to preclude due process and the right to respond. There is, of course, this idea that sabotaging students need to be protected against retaliation from "powerful" faculty--and let me tell you, there are few so powerless as a white male junior professor. Didn't I have a right to confront my accusers? Who was there to protect my rights? It wasn't the faculty or the administration. There were rumors of certain students circulating petitions against my renewal--I could certainly guess who the ringleaders were.
I initially lost a split committee vote on my right to respond. The majority responded that I would have my right to respond before the senior faculty vote. I showed up, basically to defend my honor, integrity, and record. Not a single faculty member said a word (I suspect for legal reasons); one or 2 faculty members congratulated me for showing grace under the circumstances. I think the vote against me was unanimous: an unusual rebuke.
I knew the student sharks would taste blood in the water, giddy over the success of their sabotage, knowing that the faculty and administration refused to back me. Someone from the business school administration tipped me off that a handful of students had been showing up at the Dean of Students office, showing up one at a time every day for weeks. (Think the Dean of Students would ever talk to me? I still don't know who suggested sabotaging my contract renewal; my area colleagues, the administration or others.)
I take pride in my professional integrity; if I graded an essay question, I would rank order answers to ensure fair grading. I have given A's to students I personally disliked, and one of the few students I failed had actually supported me against political garbage at UTEP (he gave me nothing to work with: he didn't turn in required work, he didn't come to see me). The presumption of retaliatory action against a student is an unconscionable attack on one's professionalism. The UWM senior faculty and administration made it clear that I had to leave at the end of my third year; from my standpoint: fine with me: I don't want to work with you bastards, either. But as a fellow professional, you owe me the courtesy afforded a fellow faculty member.
There were rumors that one or more of the troublemakers were planning to file a grade appeal. I suspected a last-minute appeal designed to prevent my right to respond in kind. I literally checked within an hour of the deadline for submitting a grade appeal. The assistant dean promised I would be provided a copy of the evidence and the complaint if it happened.
Now let's make it clear. The rules of grade appeals were very specific: the complaint had to be objective, not subjective like "I think the professor didn't like me and lowered my grade below my performance". It had to be based on specifics, like a mismarked exam that materially affected the grade he got.
So TM, one of the malcentents, did file an appeal plus filed "evidence" that seemed to impress idiots by its size and extent. The administration quickly reneged to provide me with a copy, saying it would be impractical. They would allow me monitored access (to guard against my "destroying the evidence". The "evidence"? Basically a dump of unorganized computer program listings, class notes, etc. No where anywhere was any specific mention of grade components and unfair marking. [As I recall, he passed the course with a B or C.] I would later make reference to a newer MIS hire on the committee. "Have you even looked at this stuff?" "No, there's just so much of it [more or less, where there's smoke, there's fire]" And I'm thinking, "Boy, are you a stupid bastard! You don't think reviewing the "evidence" is your responsibility?"
So when we got to the hearing, I made an immediate motion for summary judgment, based on the fact that TM's filing was based on a suspicion that he thought the administration had leaked his identity (absolutely false; I did know he was one of the malcontents who had threatened me at the start of the semester) and he felt that I had lowered his grade in retaliation (false). The committee chair laughed off the motion, like "that's not going to happen", a complete violation of policy. Who know what set of standards were in place? It was an arbitrary abuse of process.
I thought the matter was closed because the student certainly had not made a single coherent point on how he thought I had violated my grading criteria. As I pointed out, his whole appeal was a violation of university policy. But, no, the committee decides it wants to look at TM's final exam. This is more than ever a witch hunt. The committee, which is theory was to judge the appeal, was now taking on the role of a prosecutor. I'm being put in a position like Kavanaugh, asking me in effect, what do I have to hide? The fact of the matter is the student never even discussed the final exam in his whole complaint, had raised the topic in the hearing.
I didn't have anything to hide, but the optics looked bad if I refused to let this witch hunt continue. Kavanaugh similarly faced the same situation for a hearing where the liar Ms. Ford was allowed to testify against him without a single piece of evidence. In my case, it was like every single moment of this frivolous complaint was an unfair assault on my integrity and professionalism.
I was resigned to do this, when one of my few faculty friends, a finance junior professor, came to me on behalf of other professors, who didn't like what was going on and worried about the precedent being set potentially affecting them.
I think for the first time I was emboldened to push back against the committee. Basically, look I've got nothing to hide. TM's grade was based on my published criteria. TM has the burden of proof, and he didn't make his case; this whole witch hunt has violated published policy. So no more of this; you need to rule on the evidence. If you do rule against, me, I will consult a lawyer for possible libel and slander by you and the university.
The committee quickly backed off, explaining they were just doing "due diligence". (No. They were on a fishing expedition. It was not their duty to fill in the gaps of a frivolous grade appeal.) They then ruled against the grade appeal, and as far as I know,
To this day, I don't know why they did this. Was it some gimmick to get me to resign before the end of my contract by treating me like crap?
To satirize the Dems, did I feel better because I was cleared by the committee? No. I know TM was judged just like every other student. I had to endure some paranoid student's mad rants against me.
The university and faculty had publicly put me in a weak position which encouraged frivolous complaints.
There was an ironic twist as I packed up my office at the end of my contract. I found the elevator floor covered with COBOL program listings. (No longer covered by a professor.) Ask me if I was surprised. No longer my problem.
