In the Case of Martha Nussbaum - First Things (June/July 1994).
"This is the story of Martha Nussbaum's part in the Colorado trial. The reader will want to keep in mind the distinction between advocacy and scholarship, assuming there is still such a distinction in the contemporary academy. Equally important for this story are distinctions between misstatement, misrepresentation, and deliberate falsehood."
. . . .
"In her first filing, Nussbaum declared that "in all of these [pre- Christian Mediterranean] traditions and civilizations, same-sex romantic relationships, attachments, and sexual conduct were highly regarded. . . . Such relationships were never considered shameful. . . . Thus, prior to the Christian tradition, there is no evidence that natural law theories regarded same-sex erotic attachments as immoral, 'unnatural,' or improper.""
. . . .
"[W]hen one holds oneself out to public authority as a scholarly expert, does one forswear dissembling and distortion however deeply one desires to advance a cause? The link between behavior of the sort engaged in by Mohr and Nussbaum and the phenomenon of "political correctness" in the academic world is well worth considering. One can only imagine the fate of a historian who did what Mohr did as part of an effort not to support "abortion rights" but to protect fetal rights, or the fate of a philosopher who did what Nussbaum did not to advance the cause of the homosexual movement but to oppose it. Something in the academy has gone radically wrong."
"This is the story of Martha Nussbaum's part in the Colorado trial. The reader will want to keep in mind the distinction between advocacy and scholarship, assuming there is still such a distinction in the contemporary academy. Equally important for this story are distinctions between misstatement, misrepresentation, and deliberate falsehood."
. . . .
"In her first filing, Nussbaum declared that "in all of these [pre- Christian Mediterranean] traditions and civilizations, same-sex romantic relationships, attachments, and sexual conduct were highly regarded. . . . Such relationships were never considered shameful. . . . Thus, prior to the Christian tradition, there is no evidence that natural law theories regarded same-sex erotic attachments as immoral, 'unnatural,' or improper.""
. . . .
"[W]hen one holds oneself out to public authority as a scholarly expert, does one forswear dissembling and distortion however deeply one desires to advance a cause? The link between behavior of the sort engaged in by Mohr and Nussbaum and the phenomenon of "political correctness" in the academic world is well worth considering. One can only imagine the fate of a historian who did what Mohr did as part of an effort not to support "abortion rights" but to protect fetal rights, or the fate of a philosopher who did what Nussbaum did not to advance the cause of the homosexual movement but to oppose it. Something in the academy has gone radically wrong."
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