Vigili

Janice Dowell and David Sobel have drafted and circulate a kind of petition or statement of action (here and here).  Distilled to its essence, the proposed course of action is this:  academic philosophers should listen to reliable reporters who tell them that someone has engaged in sexual harassment and, in response, remove the accused person from those who are invited for talks, included in invited to contribute to volumes, or invited to conferences.  The statement has a good number of signatories, 190 by my count.  The statement does not endorse or call for some formal process, e.g., an index of forbidden persons (to exaggerate).  It is a bit coy on whether there should be any public comment at all, or if it is just an internal informal activity within departments.  A significant number of people, obviously, think it a good idea and have signed on.  I have not seen any commentary about it, but the idea is not new and there have been discussions on closely related ideas.  I am not so interested here in the text or the details of the statement -- note 4 is problematic, but it hardly matters whether the note is there or not.  I want to talk a little about the idea.  To put it starkly and somewhat unfairly, it seems to be a call for academic vigilantes.  (I said 'somewhat unfairly,' so pause a moment.)

How it is like vigilante justice.  We take the word of a reliable reporter, and acting on that word punish someone.  No formal process of evidence or confrontation, neither adversarial nor inquisitorial.  Someone says and someone else is punished.  To be sure, the punishment is sort of hard to identify: how would one know that one was not invited to a conference for that reason (rather than, say, the organizers dislike the person or think their work poor or just ran out of space).  And, as the statement notes, no one is deprived of a right by the action -- there is no right to attend or participate (at least no legal right in the form of an entitlement).  But everything operates on word of mouth, and without any further process.

How it is not like vigilante justice.  The punishments are relatively small.  No one is publicly names as, no one is physically harmed.  

More important things about the statement.  It fits within lots of other forms of punishment.  There are lots of social networks that impose punishments without any formal process, based on the word of a reliable reporter (or some similar functional role).  Consider social circles, where some are pushed out because another has something against the person, or intra-familial sanctions, or, for some religious groups, expulsion from the flock by social pressure, or shunning.  Or gossip.  The notion that punishment is at work in circumstances other than formal processes is, I think, old enough even in US philosophy circles.  I wrote about it back in the day, or for someone better known (but still a pretty nice person and kind to me), Jean Hampton.  

Something else to note.  It would be good to see a discussion of what sort of effect, if any, adhering to the statement may be expected to have on formal processes.  There is a brief note about contractual obligations of faculty to report harassment, but nothing (that I found) about whether this will (or reasonably can be expected to) strengthen the formal processes.  I think that important for two reasons: part of the justification for the statement of action is that formal processes do not seem to be effective at present and for what sorts of things should we want informal enforcement of social standards rather than formal enforcement.  

So vigili, watchers, not vigilantes.  Except for the cowboy hats, because that is the style now.