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Factual information, such as career dates, needs to be sourced to reliable sources, not opinion journals. If Jackson's piece in Quillette is WP:DUE, a fact of which I am not convinced, then a reference to that piece is only appropriate when talking about the piece itself. This is made quite clear in the WP:RSP listing for Quillette. PianoDan (talk) 16:01, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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On the one hand, I would like to see some more about Jackson's various accomplishments, such as anything he may have published, especially before starting the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. If there is a reliable source about Jackson's archiving project for Jewish music, that would also be great to see.
On the other hand, since student criticism of Jackson is already mentioned, it might also be good to try to mention that students are also named in Jackson's lawsuit against the UNT regents.
Prospective UNT music theory students coming to this article to try to learn more about Jackson might want to know more about Jackson's theory work, but they should also be warned that if they criticize Jackson's work, they might get sued for it.
That's a gross mischaracterization of the events in question. The students were not sued for criticizing his research, or having any articulated arguments about what was actually said in the journal published by Jackson. What they were sued for, is describing his behavior on campus as racist and accusing him of holding racist attitudes towards other students and faculty on social media platforms which was clearly defamation and which threatened his employment at the university. When pressed to prove what they were saying, none of the students or faculty spreading those opinions online had A. Witnessed any specific racist behavior or B. Heard any racist comments at anytime in the classroom or on campus, and were only repeating what they had heard or read online. In short, it was a completely unsubstantiated character assassination, that had real world consequences on a tenured faculty member. They opened themselves up to a lawsuit by exhibiting poor judgement in their own behavior. Which just goes to show, when you gossip, bully, and spread false rumors online you open yourself up to being sued. Not to mention that is no way to foster academic freedom on campus, by lying about someone's character because they dare to have a different intellectual opinion. That should concern everyone, even people like me who think Ewell is right to critique the music theory canon. FYI I'm personally of the opinion that the University of North Texas did violate Jackson's first amendment rights and did abuse it power in a way that both imperiled academic freedom but also violated basic publishing ethics by allowing multiple other journals on its campus to publish under similar practices and selectively target a single journal for using those same practices just because it was trying to silence/censor a particular point of view. I also believe all those named in the lawsuit deserve to be sued and believe they will be successfully sued for defamation because that is exactly what they did. 4meter4 (talk) 21:33, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you going to write a similarly long rant at me for my comment on the thread that you archived, where I concluded that part of Jackson's essay "comes across as off-topic and straight-up racist"?
Your stated opinion here that all accusations of racism against him can only be false and defamatory calls into question your neutrality on this subject. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:00, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not. I totally agree with Ewell on many points, and I think there were some horrible things in Jackson's paper. The point is the lawsuit in relation the students wasn't about the paper or students criticizing the paper. The lawsuit was about social media posts claiming he had committed racist actions on campus not anything in the publication itself. One can not like what Jackson wrote but also sympathize with the way he is being targeted, and be concerned about the consequences of people spreading false accusations and abusing their power. There is a reason UNT had to walk back its original repudiation of the journal after it went to federal court. That said, I'm all for including published critiques of Jackson's work. 4meter4 (talk) 01:08, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your stated opinion here that all accusations of racism against him can only be false and defamatory calls into question your neutrality I never said this, nor would I. There are arguably racist arguments (such as his analysis African-American culture and the way that impacts that community's participation in classical music) in his paper from the special issue. I'm basing my opinion on the news coverage I read of the court case, and the way it described students and faculty admitting that they spread content online about racist actions that they had not personally witnessed, and to which in the end nobody was able to state they had personally observed. I don't think it makes me biased to be concerned about that.4meter4 (talk) 01:41, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My, it's "fun" seeing this pop up in my watchlist again.
FWIW, I've made a few changes:
Per WP:CRITS, (essay, not policy), sections TITLED "controversy" are best avoided in WP:BLPs. So I've retitled that, and made clear that the situation related to a specific issue of JSS.
While criticism by graduate students is interesting, the mainstream coverage of the controversy and condemnation by the professional organization for all North American music theorists is, in my opinion, more WP:DUE. I've left in the line about the graduate students, but would not object to its removal in favor of the SMT information. (I WOULD object to removal of the SMT information, since that makes clear the scale of the reaction to the issue.)
