Thursday, March 01, 2007

I Stand Corrected on the Leonard Kaplan Case

First of all, I would like to thank the people who posted on the comments page of my original post on L'Affaire Kaplan. Though they vigorously disagreed, they expressed themselves with civility and made some good points. One person, writing anonymously, said something I think I should put in the foreground by featuring it here. The reason is that it requires that I qualify or take back some of the things I said. Here is what anonymous said.

FYI, the students did not first go public with their complaints. They sent a letter to the Dean. The Dean asked their permission to share the letter with Professor Kaplan, which they granted. Once shown the letter, Kaplan then spoke with the students but, in that exchange, appears to have left them more upset rather than less upset. It was only after these events took place that the students chose to organize a Wednesday night meeting, which is the first time that this matter went public. It seems a shame that the private conversation between Professor Kaplan and the students was not managed in a way that led to this being settled at that time. Even with all of that, the students have never called for censorship or discipline of Professor Kaplan. They have consistently sought a venue to teach the law school community about today's Hmong community.
In "Thing Two" in my original post, I said that KaShia Moua (and by implication the other students who initiated this public discussion) should have figured (as I did and do) that there must be some sort of misunderstanding here. Now of course it appears that they did talk to Prof. Kaplan and for whatever reason were not satisfied with what he said to them. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, (for me, at the moment) to second-guess what they did in going public with the "racism" charge. If they did some checking and still believed what they said, it's pretty hard to say that they shouldn't have acted on it.

It also makes me a good deal less sure (Things Four and Five) that Dean Davis failed to handle this well. He did try to start a productive dialogue, and I applaud that. I just wish he had said something publicly about the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom at some point.

I am tempted to go back to my original statements and silently revise them, but that would be a little too George Orwell, wouldn't it? (Down the memory hole! Never happened!) I hope this correction is good enough.

There is a meeting at the Law School about this incident this evening at 7:00. I will attend at least part of it and try to find time to blog about it afterward.

Written later: I later heard that this meeting would just be another meeting between university representatives and students, this time to arrange some sort of meeting with the Hmong community outside the university. Figuring that this would not be an informational meeting, I missed it. (Actually, I went home, exhausted after the work I'd done for a talk by Lawrence Harrison, fell asleep, woke up at midnight to get ready for class, ... it was a busy day is what I'm saying.) But now it sounds, from one of the comments on this post (see below), like some new information might have come out at this meeting after all.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the clarification Professor. I will simply write to add one more fact from what the previous anonymous wrote - that unfortunate email from KaShia was sent to close friends and associates - it was a call to arms of sort but to people she thought of as supporters. She did not think that it was going to make it to the community at large. It was certainly a surprise the email made the rounds quickly enough to get the media into the meeting last week (where they were specifically asked to leave). In hindsight, having spoken to her, she also regretted the emotional way in which she wrote it and in fact made it a point to say there was no malicious intent on Kaplan's part.

Anonymous said...

At the forum one of the students who was in the meeting with Kaplan after the course said that she was upset because Kaplan wanted her to refute what he said with some data and citations. This leads me to believe that he was in fact talking about some cultural characteristic that could in fact be refuted but something he believed was unlikely to be refuted by any data. This would be consistent with Kaplan's statements that he was attempting to deal with cultural defense issues which require making statments about cultural characterists. This student, by the way, was not in the course herself, but attended the meeting with Kaplan based on accounts by other students.

Also, I don't see why you would defend that email by KaShia Moua after they met with Kaplan. They wanted Kaplan to retract statements that he did not concede to, and it appears there was a large misunderstanding about what Kaplan thinks he said and what the students believe he said. Going public after Kaplan did not apologize for statement he obviously does not believe is wrong.

The forum tonight demonstrated that KaShia Moua is less concerned with the damage to Kaplan's reputation or hostility to ideas in the classroom than with a Hmong education project that, while good, is being built by attempting to destroy a good professor.

Lester Hunt said...

"... In hindsight, having spoken to her, she [KaShia Moua]also regretted the emotional way in which she wrote it and in fact made it a point to say there was no malicious intent on Kaplan's part,"

Thanks. I had heard this as a rumor from other people, but it is good to have this confirmation.

Lester Hunt said...

"Also, I don't see why you would defend that email by KaShia Moua after they met with Kaplan. They wanted Kaplan to retract statements that he did not concede to..."

You apparently know more about what went on in that meeting, and what was in the email, than I do.

Maybe I'd better clarify: I didn't mean to be doing anything that I would call "defending that email." I have never seen a copy of it, so I can't!

I was speaking of the much narrower issue of whether it should have been sent. My basic principle here is that more coercive methods of persuasion (such as sending incenciary third-party emails or holding angry mass meetings) should only be used after we use the less coercive method of having a rational conversation with the other person. When I found out that the students had actually had a conversation with Len it became very hard for me to say that they should not have escalated matters by going public. I was only speaking about the context of my knowledge at the time.

You say that they persisted in being angry because he refused to apologize for things he actually did not say. Clearly, that would make a big difference. If that's true, then what they were doing was indeed unfair and irrational. But this is outside the context of the knowledge I had when I made these comments.

Let me also reiterate that the contents of that email, as reported, clash with what I know of Len Kaplan after two decades of acquaintance. This has all been a misunderstanding.

Anonymous said...

The problem with this thing last night was that the activist students were not really concerned with what Kaplan said but rather with educating people to learn that what Kaplan said was racist. Now, the remarks in the email were racist but the problem is determining if he said that or the context or determining how the dean should respond. Moua admits the email was ill-informed but that did not stop the organizers from allowing the students to continue to accuse Kaplan of all these negative comments. Here is what she said (quoted from the journal-sentinel):

"Moua said Thursday night that her e-mail `wasn't well-informed' but `the remarks have had a damaging impact.'"

I would say that the email had more of a damaging impact that what Kaplan actually said because the email was meant to evoke an extremely hostile response.

Anonymous said...

This is from a student who posted on althouse's blog, which I think is very informative about bias in how this event is discussed:



I am in the Legal Process class that is the subject of the discussion and was there that day. No one was recording it or even taking notes, probably, because the class has such an informal quality.

It is being suggested by the quotes going around that Professor Kaplan's remarks were some comment about the essential worth of a Hmong man, as in "All Hmong men are good at is killing," meant that it is just in their inherent nature to kill and be good at it. They are uncivilized and that is all they are good for. This is a misrepresentation of the comments. I believe that the clear thrust of his comments was that all these immigrants who lived their whole life in the mountains of Laos are now transplanted here. There, all the men knew was killing. Here, the society is different. Kaplan pointed out the difficulties that Hmong men have had at integrating here because the kind of society here is different than the hunting society that existed in their homeland. He also pointed out how well Hmong women have intergrated because the skills that they came to this county with translate here. That is, they are weavers and artisans, and they can use that skill here while the Hmong men's skills are simply no good here. The context of the discussion was basically a critique of how the federal and state governments have dropped the ball in the way that they have handled the Hmong. Kaplan was very critical of the fact that the government should have easily forseen the problem and set up programs to help the immigrants integrate.

Also the suggestion that he made a conclusory statement that all young Hmong men turn to gangs is an incredible simplification. First of all he said that all second generation immigrant groups turn to crime as a way to break into an economy that is not integrating them. He illustrated with examples of other cultural groups, most notably that of Jewish immigrants.

He did not say that Hmong men rape their wives and then get upset that they have paid too much for them. During a discussion about legal formalism he illustrated how black letter law can be more open to interpretation than one might think, once cultural difference are factored in by using the example of a Hmong man who agrees with a woman's father to pay a dowry in exchange for a bride. Then he wants to be intimate with his wife. She says no, he does it anyway because in his mind this is a marriage and this is just the way things work. She claims she was raped. He asked how many of us in the class would agree, and I believe everyone raised their hand. He then suggested that the husband and the father might disagree, and he did say that the man thought he paid to much, which was a joke, and many people laughed.

I apologize that I can't put quotes around the things that he said, but it has been a while and I don't want to misquote him. Many of us in the class are upset about the way this is all happening, the way that his statements are being interpreted. I feel very bad for the students who feel offended, and I know that Kaplan does too. I decided not to attend the meeting last night when I read that some students from the class would give their opinions. When these comments first came out I wrote to Dean Davis and expressed that I did not agree with the characterization of those comments. When I was not invited to give my opinions I knew that only one kind of comment was going to be appreciated at last night's forum. I want my Hmong classmates to come back to class, and I am sorry that they are hurt, but I think that it is important to be a voice against "P.C." and a voice for real equality and critical thinking about the issue of race.

Lester Hunt said...

"I would say that the email had more of a damaging impact that what Kaplan actually said ..."

I have heard a rumor that, after these things became public, a speaking engagement that Len Kaplan had in Japan was cancelled (ie., by his Japanese hosts). If that rumor is right, then what you are saying here is literally true. In fact, he was more harmed by the email than anybody could have been harmed by anything we can realistically imagine him saying in that little class.

One thing I have learned from this is that we need to be very careful about what we say about people in public, or in any form that could become public, such as an email. Anybody who writes an angry message should experience a pang of send-button anxiety.

Lester Hunt said...

"This is from a student who posted on althouse's blog, which I think is very informative about bias in how this event is discussed..."

Thanks for relaying this. I had not seen it. Though one can see how a Hmong student might well take issue with what Len said, this is evidence that the charges of racism, as well as the specific quotations attributed to him, were inaccurate. Maybe now we can also say that they were irresponsible as well.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting the comments from the student who posted on the Althouse blog. It shows me the following:

1) No one took notes really - so at best we are dealing with recollections and hindsight as to what the meaning was supposed to be.

2) I believe that the clear thrust of his comments was that all these immigrants who lived their whole life in the mountains of Laos are now transplanted here. There, all the men knew was killing. Here, the society is different....He also pointed out how well Hmong women have intergrated because the skills that they came to this county with translate here. That is, they are weavers and artisans, and they can use that skill here while the Hmong men's skills are simply no good here.

The student here unwittingly confirmed some of Kaplan's comments from Moua's email and also show the level of what he does not know. "All Hmong men are killers"? They are farmers. If they learned to kill, it is because they were fighting a war against the vietnamese. "The women are weavers and artisans?" At the talk last night, a Hmong professor from UW Milwaukee pointed out that there is a stereotype that the Hmong women are weavers and have ended up in those jobs because when they first arrived here, people charged with their job placement needed to write down some transferrable skill. Weaving and embroidery was the easiest catergory to mark down and hence those were the jobs they were placed in.

3) "He then suggested that the husband and the father might disagree, and he did say that the man thought he paid to much, which was a joke, and many people laughed." So he did make the comment about paying too much.

My observations and comments on those three points are:

1) Why are we providing context in hindsight? Whatever he intended, isn't it clear his delivery hurt? Also, the email from Moua was not inaccurate, even if it were taken from the recollection of the two women who were in that class.

2) Kaplan used two pieces of sterotypcial information - as in he was inaccurate in his information. First that the men are killers and the women are just weavers. I bring this up b/c in his subsequent meeting with the women, he told them to refute his ideas, to which Mai Der said "I am Hmong and I know who we are". I would have said "Let me get this straight - you screw up a description of my identity and then are effing gracious enough to let me clear that up....go smoke a sock!"

3) For all those people clamoring for free speech - tell me the educational worth of a professor using inaccurate information, refusing to clarify the misinformation, and then challenging someone hurt by this to clear up the misinformation. What was the educational worth of Kaplan chuckling that [gee] maybe I paid too much for her?

Let me change the discussion for a sec - what if i asked someone who is jewish and who may have lost relatives in the holocaust to stand up and refute my assertion that the holocaust ever happened. How welcomed would that poor student feel? What would he/she even say to such a sucker punch????

This is what I have to say to all you defenders of free speech and observers of the "PC Police": This isn't about being PC, its about sensitivity. Its about accuracy. Its about a professor - a lawyer no less using facts rather than stereotypes. And lastly, its about reaping the consequences of your actions - you want free speech, have it. Be ready for the backlash when you screw it up.

I am by no means condoning any censorship on Kaplan or tarring and feathering him. I think he does deserve some type of rebuke though. He has done a clumsy thing and then turned around and refused to take responsibility. He has refused to acknowledge his role in the harm he caused. As much as people want to blame KaShia's email for the harm to Kaplan, he is also to blame first by saying this, second by not taking a golden opportunity to fix it, and third by not even attending a meeting to answer for it (ironic that he wasn't so happy to defend him).

Anonymous said...

All those points that Kaplan made are relevant to his course. Any of those points could have been made in a scholarly article criticizing US immigration policies toward the Hmong. These are claims that could be refuted becaues I have seen these types of observations made in policy reports on Hmong immigration and problems facing Hmong communities and also in studies of cultural defense arguments. Brining up culture as a defense requires making observations about average cultural characteristics. Economic occupations of Hmong in Laos are statements that can be refuted, as is the statement that a culture has been plagued by fighting will have fewer economic skills in an environment without prolonged civil war. Integrating individuals who were largely soldiers is difficult, and if one disagrees that many immigrant Hmong were involved in the military or fighitng prior to leaving Laos, then refute the argument.

The inability or unwillingness of students to refute these claims or to comprehend Kaplan's ideas is a poor reflection on the students. A serious academic conversation about all these issues Kaplan raised is possible and beneficial to understanding the situation of the Hmong in Wisconsin and the United States. The email from Moua made this impossible, the email was heresay, and the forum was not conducive to a serious discussion of Hmong and the law. There would have probably been a lot of constructive discussions if the students accepted the possibility that they misinterpreted Kaplan and if KaShia Moua had thought through her email before attempting to mobilize a protest movement. At first I had sympathy for the students. Now I do not feel any sympathy because they could have taken some responsibility for blowing this way out of proportion and ruining an opportunity for important discussions on Hmong in Wisconsin, the effect of informal institutions on criminal activity, and the proper relationship between the rules of criminal law and immigrant cultures. At this point, I would tell these students they need to grow up and learn to make arguments rather than to let emotions and activism cloud the learning process. If the students admitted they bear some responsibility for this mess I would have a great deal more respect for this group and would enjoy going to a forum to discuss some of these issues which are academically intriguing and socially relevant.

Lester Hunt said...

This is very interesting! It strikes me that the comments of the last two anonymous writers are mutually consistent, logically. One says that Prof. Kaplan made at least one comment that, as it was factually inaccurate and embodied a sterotype, understandably upset the Hmong students. When offered an opportunity to be conciliatory, he assumed the prove-me-wrong stance of the debater, which understandably angered them further. The other says that, right or wrong, his comments were empirical observations and not value-judgments and, as such, were hardly beyond the pale in an academic discussion. The students, however upset, ought to have taken up the challenge to enter the debate, as this is the only mind-set that can enable us to deal with explosive social issues in an academic setting.

Clearly, you could both be right. I even think that, to a substantial extent, you both are right. The reason, of course, is that you are talking about two different things. One is talking about the professional ethics of professors. The other is talking about what I suppose you could call the professional ethics of students. Which one is more important? In one way, that depends on whether you are a professor or a student. I as a professor ought to take to heart the lesson of being sensitive to the impact of my comments on students and the need to take a balanced and nuanced response on hot-button issues. Students ought to do their best to stay in the discussion (I know it’s hard!) even when the issues are explosive and the views painfully offensive. Otherwise we may have to avoid dealing with the most important issues of the day. But, as the first author would no doubt point out, in avoiding this catastrophe tact and care on the part of professors will help a lot!

[I can’t resist commenting here on one substantive issue raised by the reports of the Kaplan class. It’s about the comment, attributed to Len, that immigrant Hmong men had trouble here because in the old country they had no skills but fighting ( this not being a marketable asset in democratic capitalism). It’s my understanding of anthropology and political philosophy that this could not be true. If there ever was a tribe somewhere, where the men have no skills but fighting, they would have been wiped out by their neighbors long ago. In fact, they probably would have wiped each other out!]

Anonymous said...

Prof. Hunt,

I've enjoyed this discussion the last few days very much (I'm anon 1 that you referred to). And you have it head on - minorities need to confront, engage and speak up. And people in authority need to tread with some grace and tact.

Lester Hunt said...

Anonymous 1,

Thanks much for this vote of confidence. I don't get many!

LH

Anonymous said...

Imagine if Kaplan said, black people were born as slaves and all they are good at is stealing......but back in Africa. What do you think the response would be for this type of statement? I think the NAACP would be all up in his ass. He doesn't respect the Hmong community or fear of reprisal because he probably think no one would actually do anything about it since before he made his statement he asked if there were any Hmong student present and no one raised a hand. This could indicate why he said what he said not fearing how it would offend anyone in the classroom because he thinks no Hmong student were present!

It's an obvious issue here and Kaplan could've atleast tell the class that he did not mean to harm anyone and his only intention were to create debate or challenge the discussion of the topic the students were learning for that hour.

Kaplan should be accounted for his actions and respectively apologize due to his insensitivity and lack of cultural understanding.

Lester Hunt said...

"Imagine if Kaplan said, black people were born as slaves and all they are good at is stealing......but back in Africa."

If someone said something that insane, it would not merely be a matter of insensitivity, but of professional incompetence. But, looking at the evidence, I would say that Kaplan did not say anything like that.

"...he asked if there were any Hmong student present and no one raised a hand."

I don't think it is doing anybody any good to talk about this case as if we know exactly what he said. As far as I know, none of the early eyewitness accounts said that he asked such a question at all. In addition, at least one said that there were several Hmong students, who subsequently withdrew from the class. This looks to me like an urban legend that is picking up details and growing.

Rather than rehashing what supposedly happened -- nobody was taking notes, so we don't actually know -- we should be talking about what we should be doing differently from now on. How are we going to have a campus where people are sensitive and create an inclusive environment and yet also exercise untrammeled freedom of speech? What rights (if any) do we have, against other people, regarding what they say about the groups to which we belong? That is what we should be talking about. That is what might be doing us some good.

Angrily spreading more rumors about what was actually said, when what little evidence there is has already been looked at and argued about, is only going to do more damage.