PicoBlog

Some years ago, I invented a law, like Godwin’s or Poe’s. The law stipulates that the more often an individual accuses others of being “putrid mutts,” the more likely they themselves could be described accurately in those terms. This is not merely an argument about projection. For those of you who are not working-class Australians, it is difficult to articulate the wealth of connotations that figure of speech carries, and how using it implicates the individual. It is deserving of an entry unto itself, but it is nevertheless a law I have seen proven true time and time again[i]. I would like to propose another, although perhaps it is more of a theory than law: that the relative moral or intellectual merit of an idea correlates directly to the moral and intellectual fortitude of its proponents. It is relevant that I am writing about this (an entirely unrelated matter) not long after TERFs and Nazis walked hand-in-hand in Melbourne, defended valorously by VicPol, united in their shared predilection toward cruelty and discrimination. While theory this may seem like a way of circumventing the ad hominem’s status as an informal logical fallacy, I would like you to consider the example I am going to put forward.

Incoherence and multiple flavours of bigotry notwithstanding, based on the kinds of dregs who are rushing to the defence of a philosophy professor who left their husband for their first-year grad student, I have to conclude that I was definitely correct in the first place. This may need a shred of context. This thread arose in response to another, which in turn arose in response to a profile in the New Yorker. To understand how we got to this absolute discursive nadir, we will have to work backwards.

Philosophy professor Agnes Callard posted the following thread on Twitter:

A thread on student-faculty romances. I want to explain something, for the sake of the profession of philosophy, the field of academia, and the health of workplace gender relations more broadly: Conflating potential abuses of power with actual abuses of power benefits no one.

Recently a profile of me described how 12 years ago my husband Arnold, then a first-year graduate student taking one of my courses, told me he was in love with me. I said I felt the same, we decided nothing could happen between us, and the next day I got on a plane for New York (I am going to leave out the parts of the story connected to my divorce, you can read about them in the profile, this thread is focused on the power issue).

 From NY, I called a number of colleagues and looked into the university's rules.  I learned that there was a protocol:

(a) we needed to announce the relationship to the department chair

(b) I needed to immediately remove myself from any advisory role in relation to Arnold

(c) Arnold needed to meet weekly with a counsellor who would check in with him to make sure he was not being mistreated.

We did (a) & (b), and we did them BEFORE beginning a romantic relationship.  First thing when I came back from NY, Arnold & I met w/department chair & Arnold additionally had a meeting with the DGS & the department chair.  A colleague agreed to grade Arnold's paper for the class.

From then on, I'd exit faculty meetings whenever he was discussed. (I do the same in relation to my ex-husband, Ben, & same is true for other married couples in the dept.) Arnold met with the counsellor as required. Eventually we married, had a kid, & lived happily ever after.

All of this is causing outrage, 12 years after the fact, among people, some of whom have long known about it & did not seem disturbed until now.  Which is probably just a result of people being worked up by the profile and looking for an angle on which I come out a villain.

In general, such "takes" are worth ignoring, but here I am worried that the prominence of this case, and the reaction to it in philosophy, could lead to a bad cultural shift, encouraging and exacerbating the abuse of power in the context of workplace romantic relationships.

So let me say what should've been obvious to all: This is what a GOOD case looks like. This is what it looks like when a situation that COULD lead to an abuse of power DOESN'T lead to an abuse of power. Being open & honest & following rules can work out well for everyone: yay!

I am writing this thread because I fear that having a whole bunch of people (many of whom have some prominence in the profession) equate my case with the worst forms of abuse will drive people towards a culture of secrecy.

A blanket policy of stigmatizing even rule-abiding behaviour induces secrecy and shame, which is precisely what serial abusers rely on. (By announcing the relationship, a record is created; this is important for allowing the university to intervene when it sees a bad pattern.)

Abusive romantic relations between faculty and students are a genuine problem, it is irresponsible to wilfully exacerbate this problem because you want an outlet for some negative energy towards me. The end.

Not knowing anything about Callard, I responded politely as thus:

Agnes, I don’t know your situation — but when I was undergoing training before I started work in this field, I had to complete a quiz. According to that quiz, we’re not even allowed to hug grad students we taught when they graduate. I know even 12 years ago things were different — but personally I don’t think this should happen at all, abuse of power or not. I don’t think it’s appropriate in any context. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be close with your students in a platonic sense, but no amount of good conduct removes the inherent power differential and framing this conversation as being a way of “avoiding a culture of secrecy” isn’t good. It just shouldn’t happen. You can’t undo the past but why condone it?

Agnes made no effort to respond herself, but my phone immediately began to blow up with accusations of moral Puritanism, sex-phobia, and of course, simply being a miserable killjoy who hated other peoples’ happiness. I say “of course,” because that’s how it was phrased and framed by those who objected to my polite objection. As if questioning the professional ethics of a professor and a first-year grad student being romantically entangled being indicative of a disease of one’s soul was something painfully self-evident. I would have thought, “of course, academics shouldn’t fuck their grad students,” would be more readily apparent than the insinuation that I do not value the virtue of love (and that I embodied everything wrong with academia) but on Twitter, wonders never cease. I will admit, I bit back a little, to an extent that was unprofessional. Not as unprofessional as marrying a student, but you know. It’s all relative. On Twitter, that is.

Overall, I was staggered by the sheer amount of people willing to humiliate themselves publicly on the grounds that they passionately believe that so long as the students in question are over the age of consent, their professors should be allowed to sleep with them. Now, I have several older friends who married their professors. One of them is now amicably divorced, and although I seldom pry, I don’t get the impression that their marriage was unusually torturous. The other has been married to their former professor for many decades. However, our understandings of professional power dynamics were very different many decades ago, and frankly, given that I am the product of a (divorced) relationship where one parent was not the other’s direct boss, but adjacent to their boss, I get the general impression that things were pretty lax as recently as even a couple of decades ago. While Agnes and Arnold began their relationship eleven years ago with HR approval, for obvious reasons, it has attracted the attention of critics since they are decidedly very public about the whole thing.

From what I can infer, she idolises Socrates. From what I can infer, she’s really more of a Diogenes, if you know what I mean.

It is now time to add another layer of context. Callard was responding to criticism garnered after Rachel Aviv published her profile in the New Yorker (mostly about her marriage, truthfully), which prompted the ensuing widespread criticism of her flagrant lack of professional ethics. I took it upon myself to read the article. It reminded me of Brian Hiatt’s 2007 Rolling Stone article, “Fall Out Boy: The Fabulous Life and Secret Torment of America’s Hottest Band.” I will never forget that article because, in it, the author referred to Jeanae White, Pete Wentz’s then-girlfriend as his “sulky teenage muse.” She was indeed his sulky teenage muse, who he had been seeing on and off since she was fifteen and he was twenty-three. I bought that magazine in the seventh grade when I idolised the band, and it wasn’t until years later that I assembled the timeline and realised how unethical that was. There is something very strange about how openly and ambivalently such abuses of power were talked about so recently on a cosmic scale. The difference is, this article about Callard is from this year. I could have left it alone, but Callard’s reasoning for her behaviour the past decade has to be the single most solipsistic and self-serving pseudointellectual circle jerk I’ve ever gritted my teeth and forced myself to read. Ironically, Agnes Callard teaches ancient philosophy and ethics. Clearly not professional ethics, in any case. From what I can infer, she idolises Socrates. From what I can infer, she’s really more of a Diogenes, if you know what I mean. It stands to reason that a fan of ancient philosophy would find a way to justify what ultimately amounts to a form of pederasty, in a mentor-student-but-having-sex way, rather than purely in the sense of an age gap.

When I draw parallels to Diogenes, I am not being hyperbolic. The more I learn about Callard’s public persona, the more an analogy of public masturbation becomes pertinent.

To be entirely honest, the contents of the New Yorker profile were far more incriminating than anything Callard said on Twitter, but before I systematically work through it, some background on Callard contained in neither the profile nor the Twitter discussion may be relevant. Admittedly, this is all conjecture, but it may prove to be relevant to our discussion. In the past half-decade, Callard has been no stranger to controversy. She attracted criticism for crossing picket lines during university strikes, and for proudly tweeting about throwing out her children’s Halloween candy. When criticised, she remained steadfast in her position, joking that being nice to her children all the time would leave them ill-equipped to write interesting memoirs in the future. I’m not sure where I stand on the candy debate (she threw it out well after Halloween, citing concerns about excess confectionary consumption) and frankly, the response was witty. Not how I would parent, but I wouldn’t go as far as some to label it abuse. Crossing the picket lines I condemn unambiguously, although her mind-bogglingly solipsistic justification of doing so is a hilarious read. When I draw parallels to Diogenes, I am not being hyperbolic. The more I learn about Callard’s public persona, the more an analogy of public masturbation becomes pertinent.

I trawled through student forums and subreddits, trying to gauge public opinion. At least to see if there were more people incensed by the article on the same grounds. Not even the sordidness of the unprofessional tryst per se, but on her punishing diatribe on why it was not only permissible but a thing of beauty. This led me to several more pieces of gossip from internet users claiming to be her students and colleagues. Several former students speculated that Agnes and Arnold Brooks, her first year-grad-student-turned-husband had an affair budding long before it was brought to HR, while multiple claimed that the affair conveniently coincided with ex-husband Ben Callard’s battle with cancer. Many expressed warm sentiment toward Ben Callard, and some spoke fondly of Arnold, even if they implied his assistant professor posting was the result of nepotism. I could find very little neutral much less positive discussion of Agnes. One user even insinuated that Arnold’s position was the result of nepotism at the behest of Ben rather than Agnes, and joked that he instead should take Ben’s surname. While I have no way of confirming the veracity of these claims, the fact that someone has made these claims is important for our discussion in context, so hold that thought.

This forced me to conclude that, as they say, the lady doth protest too much.

One user posted a screenshot of the article’s author, Rachel Aviv, posting on Twitter sometime before publication saying that she had been working on a profile of an article about an academic couple, and they had asked her to watch them have sex, which I have reproduced below. Rachel Aviv has deleted all her tweets now, perhaps due to outrage at the article.

I cannot confirm the veracity of any of these claims, nor even the screenshot, but my brief dive into Agnes Callard’s career taught me that she has spent an awful lot of time discussing this publicly, including seminars on the philosophy of divorce with both her ex-husband and husband and why her actions were not only permissible but virtuous. This forced me to conclude that, as they say, the lady doth protest too much.

“The philosopher, who lives with her husband and her ex-husband, searches for what one human can be to another human,” begins the article. I have to hand it to Rachel Aviv. She took great pains to write impartially, or even positively, about some absolutely dreadful behaviour. I don’t think Aviv condones this, and her efforts to mask her contempt are mostly successful. Occasionally her own feelings shine through. Unlike Callard, however, Aviv is doing her utmost to honour her professional obligations regardless of her feelings. Perhaps I’m projecting but given that I feel like I need a shower after reading it, I imagine Aviv probably questioned her direction in life after slogging through this assignment.

It continues:

Agnes specializes in ancient philosophy and ethics, but she is also a public philosopher, writing popular essays about experiences—such as jealousy, parenting, and anger … She is often baffled by the human conventions that the rest of us have accepted. It seems to her that we are all intuitively copying one another, adopting the same set of arbitrary behaviours and values, as if by osmosis.

This is a skilful rhetorical flourish that positions Agnes as an iconoclast of a Nietzschean bent, not beholden to the petty moralism of us mere mortals. Unfortunately, the classical philosophy that Callard allegedly specialises in actually forms the basis of many moral frameworks that we uphold to this day. It is indeed by osmosis, but it begins in the area in which Agnes is purportedly an expert.

After her mutual confession of love with Arnold, Aviv states:

For the first time in her [Callard’s] life, she felt as if she had access to a certain “inner experience of love,” a state that made her feel as if there were suddenly a moral grail, a better kind of person to be.

The irony of beginning one’s journey to a better self by fucking someone you have a duty of care toward notwithstanding, there is an immediate contradiction here in philosophical terms. Classical ones, specifically. While Aviv has not used the word “platonic,” “moral grail” carries the implication of a platonic ideal. For those of you at home who’ve never had to learn this, while colloquially speaking, “platonic love” refers to any non-carnal affection, it means something else, too. Plato believed, fundamentally, that reality is subordinate to the ultimate ideal of things, that which we now call the platonic ideal in his honour. This is why platonic love is referred to as such because, in Plato’s teleology, a love that is merely a noble intellectual concept rather than bound to materiality (and indeed sexuality) is a greater one. So, one would think that in the context of her own learnings, Agnes could absolutely justify a purely hypothetical intellectual romance with a student as something of moral beauty. On the other hand, the moment that romantic impulse is acted on in physical terms, it is no longer a “moral grail,” and whether you consider this action to be morally repugnant by contemporary standards, it also loses its theoretical permissibility within the very framework Agnes studies on these grounds. To Plato, longing stares across the lecture hall are a greater beauty than the earthiness of carnality, much less domesticity. In the words of Bukowski, of all people:  

I loved you

like a man loves a woman he never touches, only

writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have

loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a

cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,

but that didn't happen […] if I had met you

I would probably have been unfair to you or you

to me. it was best like this.

When one loses moral high ground to Charles Bukowski, one must question what business they have teaching morals. It would seem that, unlike Plato and Bukowski, Agnes is not a fan of ideas, which frankly, makes for a pretty shitty philosopher. Before I continue, I should probably preface. I am not a philosopher myself. I am a writer and a scholar of literature, and my knowledge of philosophy only runs so deep as I need it to the ends of literary research and criticism. I do not know Agnes, Arnold, or Ben. My analysis of the following is based on the literature on the matter, and I am treating them as characters, no more real than those of any book I might study. I cannot be sure to what extent any of this is real, and to what extent it is part of Agnes’ public persona; a work of performance art. If this is a kind of philosophical shock rock scenario, I suppose it succeeds in its artistic ambitions. It would also slot it neatly both into the grand philosophical traditions of pederasty and artists sleeping with their fans. Nevertheless, I don’t necessarily understand this as a lawyer or HR manager would, either. What I can understand from personal experience is how a graduate student admires their professors. I only recently finished grad school myself. I would not have gone through with it had I not idolised my mentors and wanted to emulate them so. Though I wanted to be like them rather than inside them, that idolisation is a powerful motivator indeed. Perversely, I aspire to be looked up to by my students. I care about them and wish them the best (one of many reasons why I would never overstep that boundary or my duty of care), but if they looked up to me as I did my mentors, it would make me feel as if I were successful in emulating them. It would be the most flattering and validating thing imaginable. Even without professional and institutional best practices, though, is it ever permissible to be romantically involved with someone who idolises you?

That is to say, “That’s not very Platonic of you, Agnes.”

Age or strictly professional differentials aside (Arnold was twenty-seven to Agnes’ thirty-five, which I must stress, is not the actual issue here), I think it is precisely this admiration that skews the power differential between teacher and student, Agnes’ power to tank his career at any point notwithstanding. It is much like the relationship between the rockstar and their adoring fan. It is the admiration, that is to say, the mentee holding the mentor to a platonic ideal, that gives the mentor such power in this equation. Whether or not Agnes, too, held Arnold to a mirrored standard of idealism, her capitulation to his advances was a violation not only of professional ethics but the very frameworks she proselytises. Several Twitter commentators noted that Arnold made the first move. This doesn’t really matter in this context. While Agnes claims that no romantic relationship occurred before consultation with HR, I find it very difficult to believe that their mutual confession of love took place with no precedent. I think all good teachers care deeply for their students. There is, however, a boundary that would have to have been crossed to even facilitate this exchange already. That is to say, “That’s not very Platonic of you, Agnes.” It would be one thing for a lovestruck student to confess their love to their teacher, but the reciprocity of their exchange does not bode well for Agnes’ claim that nothing untoward took place prior to consultation.

Aviv continues:

 (In accordance with university guidelines, they had declared their desire to have a relationship to the chair of the philosophy department, and Agnes recused herself from academic authority over Arnold.) Sometimes it seemed to Agnes that the universe had been prearranged for her benefit. If she and Arnold were taking a walk together and she craved a croissant, a bakery would suddenly appear. If she needed a book, she would realize that she was passing a bookstore, and the text she wanted was displayed in the window. She thought that this was now her permanent reality.

Unbecomingly saccharine sentiment aside, one must question whether one prone to such giddiness was ever fit to hold a position of academic authority. A moral philosopher, of course, should be aware that bureaucracy is not a 1:1 correlator with morality. That the policy permitted this tryst did not absolve her of any wrongdoing and perhaps she anticipated a response cognisant of that. She felt fit to give a speech to her students on what had taken place, which Ben graciously looked over. Rather than reassure her students that she had their best interests at heart and was not planning on taking advantage of any of them, she took great pains to tell her students how wonderful her relationship with one of their peers was. Aviv summarises it thus:

Her experience had prompted her to reinterpret a famous speech, in the Symposium, in which Socrates, whom she considers her role model, argues that the highest kind of love is not for people but for ideals. She was troubled by Socrates’ unerotic and detached view of love, and she proposed that he was actually describing how two lovers aspire to embody ideals together [..]. “One of the things I said very early on to my beloved was this: ‘I could completely change now,’ ” she recounted. “Radical change, becoming a wholly other person, is not out of the question. There is suddenly room for massive aspiration.”

After the talk, a colleague told Agnes that she was speaking as if she thought she were Socrates.

The irony of wanting to become a person who sleeps with their students notwithstanding, this is a particularly flagrant example of what I referred to earlier in this piece as Sophistry. That a professor could somehow turn a speech intended to assuage student concerns into an opportunity for self-aggradisation is bizarre, but it demonstrates a mastery of a certain rhetorical tradition. A tradition at least adjacent to those Agnes is supposed to be an expert in, if somewhat adversarial to. In the colloquial sense, sophistry refers to the use of rhetoric to persuade with little regard for truth. Agnes’ apparent level of respect for the intellectual work of her idols becomes apparent here. All readings are beholden to interpretation, of course, but the great liberties she has taken with Socrates in service of justifying her entirely unethical actions not only demonstrates contempt for good taste and practice but of the very Socratic ideals she is supposed to work with and aspire to. Like ex-husbands, student husbands, a public platform, and so on, even the subject of Agnes’ studies is merely a tool in the service of the self. Not even necessarily the internal self so much as Callard the product.

There are several paragraphs of a fairly fluffy bent before Aviv hits us with another gem:

Agnes has generally avoided speaking publicly about being autistic, in part because she worries that people will find it preposterous for her to use a label once closely associated with people who are nonverbal. But she feels that the diagnosis helps her understand her immunity to the pull of a certain received structure of meaning. In addition to the philosophical underpinning of her marriage to Arnold, there is perhaps an autistic one, too, in that most of us learn to ignore all the subtle ways in which we settle and compromise, based on our received sense that this is the way relationships work. Agnes never assumed that those social conventions inherently made sense.

From one neurodivergent academic to another, the framing of marrying one’s grad student as “philosophical” and “autistic” in nature does no favours for either designation. I think this was the point in reading that tipped me over the edge from being critical of Agnes’ actions to actively disliking her. I was beginning to see her as a kind of contemporary Ayn Rand in terms of both interpersonal relationships and peddling pop philosophy to pseudointellectuals to justify pathological self-obsession retroactively. Conversely, if we are to view audacity as a virtue, then she has truly succeeded in her role as a moral philosopher. Still, following Agnes’ example, next time I relapse on substances and begin dragging stray items from council pickup [kerbside collection] piles to pawn, or liberating loose copper from building sites, or catalytic converters from beneath parked cars, I’m going to remember that accessing the sublime platonic ideal of a “moral grail” and having autism are viable justifications to peddle to law enforcement and mental health professionals alike.

What Aviv writes next cannot, however, be written off in merely intellectual terms:

Agnes got pregnant shortly after getting married, and she and Arnold moved back into the apartment that she had shared with Ben. It seemed unnecessarily burdensome for the oldest children to bounce between two homes, spending half their time away from their youngest sibling, a brother. “We wanted all three children to have breakfast together,” Ben said. Agnes noticed that people who had once urged her not to get a divorce were now pushing her to distance herself from Ben, to make a “clean break.” But she and Ben were still dependent on each other in ways that she didn’t want to ignore. They saw no reason to separate their bank accounts. They never stopped talking about philosophy. Ben took on a parental role with the youngest boy, Izzy, assuming a roughly equal share of the child care.

One conservative commentator used this opportunity to deride Ben as a “cuck.” Let me be abundantly clear: I think Ben Callard is a saint, and his actions very clearly demonstrate that he is a very gracious and solid man who loves his ex-wife and children (I think also it pays to note that the commentator who wrote this, Rod Dreher, easily sucks as badly as Agnes does; his article was really more about his own divorce than hers). I think it’s heroic that Ben would put the welfare of his children (theoretically) above his own feelings and comfort. Despite the meekness of his actions, he’s a very quiet kind of Atlas figure. Where Ben, however, is very quiet in his dealings, Agnes is terribly loud. I fear the net good of having both parents around would be broadly undone when the kids at school find out about Agnes’ fixation on using their divorce (and her subsequent marriage to her student) as fodder for public-facing content. Agnes, Ben, and Arnold worked on a seminar about “the philosophy of divorce” together, while the two men co-teach a class on paradoxes. While I admire Ben’s decision to put not having the kids separated from either parent above anything else, facilitating Agnes’ public circus has the potential to easily damage the kids more than a normal divorce.

I personally know some philosophy professors who are iconoclastic smartarses, but it’s hard not to see Ben and Arnold the kinds of philosophy professors represented in The Good Place’s Chidi Anagonye: meek, eternally hang-wringing, and martyr-like to an extent that is detrimental not only to them but others. I mean this with utterly no disrespect. I love that character. Indeed, please, gentlemen, next time you’re on camera, blink twice if you need help. One enraged Twitter user told me I was a misogynist and a coward for not physically flying to Illinois to tell Ben and Arnold to their face that I felt they’d been exploited. I wouldn’t want to do that, not least because my heart bleeds for them. In seeing the absolute sideshow of humiliation they’ve been subject to, if either could form a fist properly I’d let them wail on me until their hearts were content. They deserve someone making a sacrifice for them after they’ve sacrificed so much, Ben more so, of course. I’m not attacking their masculinity here, but I am concerned about their ability to stand up for themselves. From this article and its paratexts, I cannot see Agnes as anything but a human wrecking ball, and the relative meekness of both her domestic partners does not bode well for the continual assertions from Agnes’ defenders that everyone is consenting and having a good time. Aviv articulated next what we were all thinking:

When I told a friend about Agnes’s home life, she said that she was reminded of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, about a utopian city where everyone’s happiness depends on the suffering of one child, who is locked in a dark cellar, abandoned and starving. My friend suggested that Ben must live in the metaphorical cellar, sacrificing himself for the good of the family—an interpretation that, on some level, made sense to me.

I definitely preferred my comparison to Atlas, not least because it would imply the kind of dignity that Ben deserves. Following this paragraph, Ben and Agnes rushed to clarify Aviv’s position, to ensure the reader that everything was consensual and not at all an exercise in psychological torture. Let me preface this; I am an open-minded person who has known many friends in non-monogamous arrangements, and I wholly advocate for respectful and cordial co-parenting arrangements. I’d go so far as to say that co-parenting situations where the former couple are the best of friends are a platonic ideal I uphold. The issue is that such situations rarely begin with one leaving the other for their student before making the entire scenario a public spectacle. Despite his attack on Chris Rock robbing him of public goodwill, you may recall the contradictory gut-level mix of sympathy and derision expressed by many toward Will Smith when Jada Pinket-Smith discussed her affair on live television. I have seen many wonderful respectful co-parenting situations play out. I have also seen dismal situations where an affair preceded separation and the ex-partner, despite being the bigger man, is regarded a certain way by their mutual associates. Whether they know consciously they are partaking of the moral course of action, the aggrieved party in such a scenario is often acutely aware that they are being viewed with a mix of pity and contempt, particularly when they are a man. I have no contempt for Ben, and I think his actions demonstrate virtue, but I am also not representative of most people.

Whether or not Ben remains heartbroken over the marriage, he, Arnold and the children must contend with public contempt, which Agnes seems determined to perpetuate by airing their dirty laundry as loud as possible. For what it’s worth, having watched videos of Ben, there is nothing undignified about him. While he has the nervous disposition of many academics, he appears nothing like the beleaguered figure described in the New Yorker piece in video appearances. Most people, however, will cast judgement before they’ve dug that deep.

If Agnes was my ethics professor, I’d drop the class — half because she’s ill-equipped to teach it, half because her giving me the “fuck me” eyes while looking down from the lectern wouldn’t exactly facilitate a “safe and respectful learning environment.”

If we remove the pseudointellectual horseshit, the story so far goes something like this: creepy loser professor with a weirdly high profile at a good university is horny for her grad student, ditches husband (who may or may not have just recovered from cancer), convinces ex-husband to have her and the new husband move in with him and take on care duties of the new child, proceeds to make this the entire focus of her public discourse henceforth, arguing that her absolute devotion to selfishness is “aspirational.” Now, of course, some of this is conjecture from Reddit, but for the most part, this is what we can infer happened from the article.

I am referring to moral philosophy frameworks here in partial jest, and in partial hope that any of the individuals involved in this sordid affair will read it and see how it comes across — but I am by no means a moralist. I have seen equally selfish and self-centred sequences of behaviour play out, but I have never seen such things publicly justified and publicised using rhetoric, much less successfully. I couldn’t have imagined it would have ever been successful had I not seen Agnes’ impassioned defenders, but likewise, there are just as many more people as aghast at this clusterfuck as I am. If Agnes, as per her tweet, gave one iota of a fuck about philosophy as a field, she would disassociate herself from it entirely because this is the kind of shit that lowers public opinion of an entire discipline. If Agnes was my ethics professor, I’d drop the class — half because she’s ill-equipped to teach it, half because her giving me the “fuck me” eyes while looking down from the lectern wouldn’t exactly facilitate a “safe and respectful learning environment.”

Agnes gave a glowing review of Aviv’s writeup on Twitter, saying that there was no spin and it showed things just as they are. However, I also think that Aviv has the occasional Freudian slip where she can’t contain how contemptible she finds the subject of her writing. Referring to the symposium ran on “The Philosophy of Divorce,” Aviv said the following:

 Throughout the event, Ben seemed to recede. He kept pulling the discussion away from his own life toward increasingly academic problems. It was a testament to his generosity that although he didn’t seem to feel comfortable with the project—he told the students he was an “under-sharer”—he was doing the best he could, because Agnes wanted to show their students how philosophy could apply to the most consequential decisions of their lives.

Of course, this diminishing language applied to Ben and the explicit mention of his discomfort at being subjected to public scrutiny in this matter suggests that there’s at least a modicum of truth to my earlier assessment. While I genuinely hope with every fibre of my being that Ben has ascended to such a philosophical level of nirvana that he is unaffected by this, I remain sceptical. In saying that, his countenance on video is not that of a broken man. He does not seem to be unhappy, but nevertheless, his complicity in The Agnes Show™ does suggest that he is in thrall to her. If Agnes was showing their students anything, it was how philosophy could be applied to justify the most consequential decisions you make to the detriment of everyone else in your life. Thank God Agnes is so uncharismatic in her writing, because her rising to Jordan Peterson levels of public recognition would open a Pandora’s box whereby every single shitty thing a human could do to another short of murder could be hand-waved away with dreary psychobabble contemptuous of its theoretical precedents. Conversely, she actually comes off as quite likeable on camera. Effervescent and girlish, perhaps this is the image her defenders have surrounded like a phalanx of whataboutisms. I don’t credit impassioned defenders of workplace sexual impropriety with much critical wherewithal and it checks out that the extent of their engagement with philosophy would be The Agnes Show™ on Youtube. It is interesting that Agnes described Aviv’s angle as bereft of spin because, inadvertently, it spins her in quite an unsavoury light. It is not merely the events leading up to the divorce that might provoke readers to anger, but the circumstances of her second marriage.

Aviv’s article next goes on to describe a series of disagreements and disappointments transpiring between Agnes and Arnold that give me a sympathetic headache to read. She comes off as capricious, demanding, and at times condescending. The “philosophical nature of their relationship” seems to be a convenient way to make Arnold subordinate to her every whim, which by the description in the New Yorker, I can only assume means intellectually rigorous conversations on the philosophy of setting the table, doing the dishes, or putting the goddamn toilet seat down, punctuated by disagreements as to whether their relationship remains sufficiently “aspirational.” Aviv further states that:

A common refrain in their fights was whether Arnold, who became an assistant professor in 2021, should aspire to more. Agnes felt that he could write an extraordinary book about Aristotle, but he was content to read the texts and share his interpretations with his students.

Now, even if you can look at every other extract from the article and determine that Agnes has not abused Arnold or Ben (interpretations of abuses of power notwithstanding) there are some issues with this line of argument. I am like Arnold in that I love teaching, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever aspire to write a monograph or textbook. It is fortunate that Arnold’s aspirations are not so lofty because the nature of Agnes and Arnold’s relationship has done incalculable damage to Arnold’s capacity to further his career. The fact that multiple students on Reddit implied that Arnold is a nepo (sugar) baby (despite several saying he had been one of their favourite teachers), effectively robs Arnold of his accolades in attaining an assistant professor role the same year he finished his doctorate (which is quite an achievement). The grimness of their relationship has diminished Arnold’s professional reputation no matter how well-liked he is on an interpersonal level. I think it’s lucky that he’s not aspiring to climb the academic ladder because there’s a good chance his ubiquity in Agnes’ mythos would be to dis detriment.

Maybe this is a little bit optimistic of me, but I believe that most things people call abuse are not out of a place of calculated malice, but rather, out of disregard. I think most abusers are simply putting their own caprices and well-being above that of the abused party, and not even necessarily intentionally. I don’t necessarily think that Agnes “groomed” Arnold in the most technical sense, but in beginning a relationship with him, no matter how well she treated him, she would ultimately be putting his well-being below hers, if only by virtue of potential risks. While, again, I cannot reasonably make the claim that Arnold was “abused” or that Agnes’ actions were an intentional “abuse of power,” this lapse in her duty of care has had at least some implications for Arnold’s future. Engaging in a relationship with a student is a fundamentally selfish and self-serving act. It may not be one of calculated malice, but there’s no philosophical justification that can outweigh the quantitative evidence that at least several people believe that Arnold is the beneficiary of nepotism. Even if he was, he may well be the best fit for the role. The issue is that we will never know definitively, and neither will any other member of the public. Agnes’ initial actions are indicative of a very myopic focus on what lends itself to her aspirations, something that Aviv’s article seems to imply pervades their relationship still. According to Aviv, it does not end there, with her stating that:

Agnes was uncomfortable with the prospect of a relationship that had lost its aspirational character. She wondered what it would look like if she and Arnold integrated new romantic relationships into their marriage. They would all keep talking about philosophy, but with fresh ideas in the mix. They asked each other whether it would violate the terms of their marriage if they became romantically involved with other people. “We didn’t think there was any good reason other than the usual conventions of marriage to answer that question with a yes,” she said. They referred to their new agreement as the Variation.

 I am not by any means implying that all polyamorous people are inherently selfish or self-serving, nor that prior relationships invalidate the latter ones. The idea of “intellectually” or “philosophically” (and also literally) “spicing up a marriage” so to speak is still somewhat indicative of a broader pattern of disloyalty and impulsivity. On the matter of patterns, if Agnes and Arnold’s relationship is no longer monogamous, the pattern of evidence would suggest that she may well pick potential partners from the pool of her graduate students. Supposing the University of Chicago’s HR policy hasn’t been updated since 2011, there’s really nothing to stop this from happening again. On one hand, Agnes may continue to play by the rules. On the other hand, she said herself that reactions to her story might engender a “culture of secrecy.” I don’t think most people would infer that at all. I think most would just take that as another of the myriad of reasons not to fuck their students. Agnes seems to think that the rules as they were in 2011 worked, though, so this is unlikely. What is likely is that if she did begin a relationship with another grad student, they too would have to contend with her negative press impacting their career. It is not as if she likes to keep a low profile. But what of Arnold?

Aviv quotes Agnes accordingly:

“I think a lot of our fights boil down to Arnold thinking he’s already arrived at the final condition where he doesn’t need me anymore,” Agnes said, “and me trying to point out to him that he’s not as great as he thinks he is, so that he can see that he actually does still need me.”

Arnold smiled slightly, his eyes cast down.

Now, I may be, once more, predicting a pattern but it appears to me that Aviv may have let slip an iota of her distaste for the subject on which she is writing. Abuse is a spectrum, and it’s also somewhat contingent on what an individual’s boundaries are. I can only speak subjectively here, but chipping away at one’s partner’s sense of self-worth, insinuating that this is why they “need” you seems like something that is morally objectionable, even if it does not fit the legislative definition of abuse. One smiling slightly with eyes cast down could be interpreted a number of ways, but it is not generally construed as body language that suggests confidence or self-assuredness. Certainly not in response to one’s partner insisting that they’re “not as great as they think they are,” and thus need them. On the other hand, I’m willing to give Agnes the benefit of the doubt in the assumption that she said this jocularly. More than once have I heard someone imply they needed to “take their spouse down a peg” or “put them in their place” without their tone at all suggesting sincerity. It would, however, pay to be careful with answering in jest when one is already attempting to reconcile a matter of taboo, especially in written discourse.

Aviv concludes with a few more points:

Agnes eventually wants to write about unconventional family arrangements like hers, but she has also noticed that when people write about such topics they are both celebratory and defensive, as if they were trying to put a good face on it. She doesn’t want to draw conclusions until she can “grasp the real thing in all its tragic splendour,” she told me. When I asked about the nature of the tragedy, she sent me a list of sixteen points. “However many people you have, it is never enough” was the first point on the list. “One is not enough (this is part of the tragedy of monogamy), but neither is two, or three.”

That Agnes and co’s contributions to this profile are already celebratory notwithstanding, I would say if they’re your students, one is more than enough — but hey, who’s counting? I would suggest cordially that Agnes absolutely fucking does not write about unconventional family arrangements, because I am inclined to think that it would be tonally similar to Joseph Fritzl’s rather unpopular tome on the subject. That’s a joke. Joseph Fritzl didn’t write a book about that, but he still probably could have done a better job of appearing likeable in it. I understand that Agnes specialises in ancient philosophy, but modern ethics would probably suggest that holding a partner up to a platonic ideal, and simply either leaving or finding more partners when they failed to live up to the aforementioned ideal is indeed a tragedy as much as it is human. What is ethical by my own reckoning is to see one’s partners as, well, partners rather than a number partially filling one’s quota of amusement, intellectual engagement, sexual relief and so on. Of course, I have no framework by which to justify that position, but if we’re being intellectually honest, neither does any position in the New Yorker article.

I am not suggesting that the University of Chicago try and retroactively take disciplinary action or otherwise fire Agnes, if only for the fact that her inevitable rise to stardom as an “anti-woke/anti-cancel culture” far-right “public intellectual” in the face of her dismissal would be the only conceivable career trajectory more insufferable than the one she’s already on.

Before someone bitches at me about it, I’m not trying to “cancel” Agnes here. She does a pretty good job of that herself every time she puts pen to paper. This is not a character assassination, but a character analysis mostly based on information Agnes herself relayed to Aviv, who I might add demonstrated an absolutely herculean effort in journalistic integrity to not make this read like a hit piece. The best kinds of hit pieces, though, are the ones that don’t read like hit pieces. Whether or not you, dear reader, are one who cannot possibly conceive of how a relationship like this might be unethical, inappropriate, or so on and so forth for the mere fact that Arnold was over the age of consent, I think anyone can agree that based on the New Yorker piece (and other selected writings), Agnes’ behavioural patterns show a predilection toward pathological selfishness, sophistry, and self-aggrandization. Her eccentricities, which seem to appeal to at least some anonymous bigots on the internet, have anecdotally not endeared her to her students, save for Arnold.

I am not suggesting that the University of Chicago try and retroactively take disciplinary action or otherwise fire Agnes, if only for the fact that her inevitable rise to stardom as an “anti-woke/anti-cancel culture” far-right “public intellectual” in the face of her dismissal would be the only conceivable career trajectory more insufferable than the one she’s already on. Her flirtations with anti-cancellation discourse are already the epitome of cringe. I would only like to reiterate my earlier statements. Agnes cannot change the past, but she could have the decency to frame it as the inappropriate behaviour it is and advise against such interactions altogether, taking accountability, rather than justifying it with a hint of threat that it will go on in secrecy to the detriment of abusive victims (itself yet another admirable display of solipsism).

I mentioned earlier that I find it difficult to reconcile Agnes’ written work with her appearances on video. I must confront my biases in writing something such as this. I wonder whether all of her writings would have engendered such a visceral disgust in me had I not been introduced to her as someone who’d married her student and then defended her actions six ways til Sunday. While every instance of her writing I have consulted displays the same disturbing trends toward solipsism as the New Yorker profile, had I only ever seen her Youtube channel, I might have liked her. I almost find her insufferable written voice irreconcilable with her presence on film. Her students on Reddit seem not to care for her much, but they too most likely know her as the picket line crosser, or the candy lady, if not on the exact same grounds I was introduced to her on. What she lacks in moral character, she seems to make up for in stage presence based on her videos. However, this is ultimately not about individual charisma or even character. It’s about the absolute tripe passed off as philosophy on the subject of actions generally considered indicative of poor character, and the poor character of those defending said actions. It’s about analysing this sample of writing to see if it is as contemptible as the people defending its position. In short, to refer back to my initial theory: the contemptibility of those rushing to Callard’s defence on this matter speaks volumes about the quality of Callard’s argument.

Which Agnes is the real one? The written persona, or the individual in the video? Does it matter? Or is it, in fact, that Agnes went on to further defend her actions rather than take accountability that is the issue? Does she, in fact, know all these things, but has rather chosen to court controversy and nurture a fanbase of the lowest common denominator? Is any publicity good publicity? Is she angling to be the new Germaine Greer? Is she the new Ayn Rand? Is she, as I suggested earlier, today’s Diogenes?

Diogenes, for those who missed the reference, was a Greek philosopher who would, among other antisocial behaviours, masturbate in public to espouse the joys of going against the grain of society. Basically, he was like the G.G. Alin of the ancient world. It goes without saying that I equate making a public spectacle of student-faculty relationships with public masturbation. I am not chasing clout. This is highly unprofessional of me, and will likely be to the detriment of both my writing and academic careers. However, in terms of moral philosophy, I am squarely a utilitarian. In layman’s terms, that means I value consequences over intentions and believe that the action equating to the most net good in the world is the right one. If so much as one person rethinks the idea of fucking their student, or fucking their professor, for that matter (based on what I think is a fairly measured response to this absolute clusterfuck of ethical degeneracy), then I am happy to have lost sleep and risked my career to sleep straight in future.

Of course, perhaps this merely speaks to the fact that there aren’t enough women in philosophy, to the extent that grad students and professors alike are willing to debase themselves to share the attention of one. Or, perhaps, the abuse of power is less even in the initial wrongdoing so much as the use and abuse of a strangely large platform to continually profit off a professional violation. Conversely, while it is abundantly clear that this relationship did take place, I am not entirely convinced that Agnes doesn’t know that it was wrong, but is riding the controversy, having a lend of us all while laughing all the way to the bank. In constructing such an insufferable written persona, she is able to generate publicity fuelled by both the contempt of the ethical majority and the admiration of the ethically bankrupt.

If you’re reading this, Agnes, I’m happy to publicly debate the finer points. If you’re game.

[i] In Western Sydney vernacular, and anecdotally, in Greater Sydney as well as certain working-class areas elsewhere throughout the country, “putrid” carries a very specific meaning. Rather than the denotation of rotten or odorous, in the colloquial context, it refers to not literal but moral or ethical rottenness. While it has since been appropriated by some in the general public, the term was once used exclusively among those with at least tangential connections to the underclass and the criminal element. It was used to discuss behaviour that was considered dishonourable among criminals, and often designated crimes that were not permissible (sexual violence, child abuse, snitching, stealing from friends and family, etc.) and carries connotations of shiftiness or disloyalty. “Mutt” in this context referred to one who was explicitly disloyal. To be a putrid mutt (despite the overlap of both terms) is to be one who is untrustworthy, disloyal and a liability for unforgivable behaviour against those close to them. The reason Muir’s Law functions is that knowing the term itself indicates a familiarity with poverty, addiction, desperation, and criminality. It is not merely working-class vernacular, but criminal vernacular. Anecdotally, almost everyone I’ve known to make frequent use of the term has engaged in the behaviour that would designate them a putrid mutt in someone’s eyes. I am saying this without judgement. Addiction is hell. So is poverty. I once was once a destitute addict. I am not proud of all my actions during that time in my life. Accordingly, I saw the term used frequently by those in similar positions to me. As often as not, the accuser was guilty of the very charge they laid. This is entirely tangential to the matter of Agnes Callard, but I don’t mind invoking my late-teen self in saying that she is, in my eyes, a putrid mutt.

ncG1vNJzZmialaO3ornIp5umrZmne7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY6pZqenXZa0r7HSZqqlnZWltq%2BzjLCgraBdrry2voysq66claPBtA%3D%3D