Talk:Timothy L. Jackson/Archive 1

"Editeur24/jackson" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Editeur24/jackson. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 30#Editeur24/jackson until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Stefan2 (talk) 12:06, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Note - this is NOT related to the current draftification of the article, but is rather related to an error made when the page was originally published, and is no longer relevant. PianoDan (talk) 16:01, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Jackson Timothy L.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:35, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Open letter on antiracist action

As an additional clause in a single sentence, I don't feel that including the link to the open letter is WP:UNDUE. By restoring it, User:Hucbald.SaintAmand has clearly also indicated they felt it is appropriate. Further discussion would seem to be warranted to attempt to achieve a consensus before additional reverts. I'll add a link to a source other than the Google doc, however. PianoDan (talk) 00:13, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Mot a reliable source: "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Google documents doesn't satisfy this. "The term "published" is most commonly associated with text materials, either in traditional printed format or online; however, audio, video, and multimedia materials that have been recorded then broadcast, distributed, or archived by a reputable party may also meet the necessary criteria to be considered reliable sources. Like text, media must be produced by a reliable source and be properly cited." The clause should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.184.26.105 (talk) 01:43, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:BLP forbids non-reliably-published sources on biographies of living people. That is especially true, as in this case, where the material in those sources is controversial. Open letters, departmental web site opinion pieces, and the like, should not be used here. Let's stick to properly published material, please. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:49, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

David: Shouldn't the statement of the Board of the Society of Music The4oiry be removed for the same reason? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.184.26.105 (talk) 04:11, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

That appears to be an official announcement of a society rather than an editorial by a random member of the society posted as a non-publication of the society's web page, so I don't think it's at all the same thing as the removed sources. I did also remove another blog source used as a reference for who Jackson's mother was. Since this information didn't seem to be controversial I left it in the article for now with a citation needed tag, but if we can't eventually find a better source we should remove it. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:12, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

This is all perfectly reasonable. I found a book chapter that referred to the letter, so there is a reliable source that it exists. However, what's important about the letter is that the number of signatories represents a significant fraction of the discipline in the US, which is what makes it WP:DUE here - establishing that this criticism is NOT, in fact, a minority position. Unfortunately, the book chapter doesn't mention that, so I'm not going to bother adding it back in at this time. PianoDan (talk) 15:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

I must confess that I fail to see why the open letter signed by more than 900 members of the SMT should not (or could not) be mentioned.

• Is there any doubt about its existence? In addition to Utz' book, it is mentioned here and here and here and here and here and ... I suppose that this may suffice to make the point.
• Is it that none of these may qualify as a reliable source? Does not their number suffice to make their content reliable and to confirm that the open letter does exist?
• Is it that it gives to much strength to the argument of the SMT, or rather that it shows how SMT members are "making complete fools of (them)selves"?
• Or is it irrelevant to the controversy? I think on the contrary that it illustrates how excessive the controversy is: the open letter calls for a "A censure of the advisory board of the ​ Journal of Schenkerian Studies", no less. Timothy Jackson is victim of a censure, by more than 900 of his colleagues music theorists.

The article itself of course should keep as neutral a position as possible in this: WP is not the place to choose a camp. But then, what's the point, what's the hidden intention of hiding the existence of this open letter? — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 21:03, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

If the SMT open letter is included, shouldn't the open letter of the European theorists also be included? It responds to the SMT letter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.184.26.105 (talk) 22:25, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Certainly, as long as it's clear that roughly 20 times as many theorists signed the SMT one. The point of including the letter is to contextualize the acceptance (or rather lack thereof) of Jackson's positions in the overall field of music theory. A biography of a flat earth adherent would make clear that their position is not one shared by the majority of geologists, but could still note the presence of a flat earth movement, and of other flat earth supporters, and that wouldn't inherently violate WP:BLP as long as it was worded as a neutral assessment of the field. PianoDan (talk) 01:55, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

References

So, PianoDan, since you appear to have more insight into what the consensus of the music theory field is compared to my total lack of knowledge on the matter, perhaps you can clarify some points in the article for me. We currently describe Jackson's position as consisting primarily of opposition to the two claims (A) "Schenker was an adherent of Nazi ideology" and (B) "Schenkerian theory is inherently racist". If this is an accurate description of Jackson's position, and it is accurate that his position is the opposite of the mainstream consensus, it would seem to me that you are asserting that the mainstream consensus is that both (A) and (B) are true. Is that in fact what you are asserting? Do we have sources that we can use to document the mainstream acceptance of claims (A) and (B), in order to clarify that Jackson's position is a fringe one? It is somewhat mysterious that our article on Jackson dances around Schenker's actual views to the point that it doesn't even link directly to our biography of Schenker. The open letter does not clarify this point at all — as far as I can tell it claims that Jackson was racist or unscholarly either for opposing Ewell's research positions at all, or for the manner in which he opposed them, but it does not say anything pro or con about the actual content of those positions beyond a very vague opening statement agreeing that "systemic racism, sexism, and ableism animate musical discourse" (peace motherhood and apple pie: of course they do, they animate all discourse ancient and modern) without connecting those claims to Schenker. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:49, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

David: You can't use this because it is not yet published, but it might help you clear up your confusion. Why Philip Ewell’s “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame” is Fundamentally Wrong: Ignoring Inconvenient Facts https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4020545 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.184.26.105 (talk) 04:41, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

As has been repeatedly pointed out, that article is self published and not peer reviewed, and therefore not a reliable source. PianoDan (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

To respond to the prior question: Unsurprisingly, it's complicated. First off, no one is actually accusing Schenker of being a Nazi to my knowledge. He was, in fact, Jewish. And "Schenkerian theory is inherently racist" is a tremendous oversimplification of the claims that started all this. On the other hand, that statement makes a very easy straw man.

The claims that are ACTUALLY being made are that (A) Schenker was a racist (but not a Nazi), and that (B) because of his racism, the long term effects of viewing music through his and other similar lenses needs to be carefully examined. After Ewell made this case at a plenary talk at the SMT conference in late 2019, Jackson orchestrated the creation of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies (JSS) issue 12, which was a collection of responses to the talk. The claim that SMT and UNT have unambiguously made is that Jackson committed fairly severe academic malpractice in the creation of the issue by a) not submitting it for proper peer review, b) not soliciting a response from Ewell, and c) allowing a contribution from an anonymous source. The call for responses also went out before the actual written version of the talk was published. (Worth noting is that the journal in which the plenary was eventually published, Music Theory Online, is a flagship journal of the field.)

A further claim made by SMT, (but not UNT, whose report was confined to the editorial process, not the content) is that a number (but not all) of the articles in the JSS issue contained ad hominem attacks on Ewell, and directly racist statements. In particular, Jackson's article, but this claim is definitely leveled at many of the other articles as well. However, as Jackson was the orchestrator of the issue, it would be incumbent on him to ensure such arguments didn't occur in ANY of the articles. That claim IS supported by the (over nine hundred) signatories to the open letter, which represents a sizable fraction of all the music theorists in the US. (It's not a large field.)

So to be clear - the sentence in the WP article that "In December 2021, Jackson published a response to Ewell's thesis that Schenker was an adherent of Nazi ideology with racist convictions and that Schenkerian theory is inherently racist." is true and false. It's true, because that's the argument Jackson chose to respond to. It's false, because that's not the argument Ewell was making. Ewell argues that Schenkerian theory is an inherently racialized lens through which to view music, and perpetuates the framing of music scholarship as a white discipline. He also expressly demonstrated Schenker's racism towards Black people. PianoDan (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

References

So if I understand you correctly (1) Ewell said something that, viewed objectively, might have been uncontroversial, about Schenker holding certain racist beliefs and Schenkerian theory reflecting some of those beliefs, (2) Jackson misinterpreted Ewell as accusing Schenker of being an actual Nazi and accusing anyone following his theories (including Jackson himself) of having racial animus as a central motivation, (3) Jackson took this all as a personal attack accusing Jackson himself of being irredeemably racist, and felt he needed to defend himself against such heinous accusations, but what to him was intended as a defense come across to others (who had not made the same misinterpretation) as an unprovoked attack, and (4) everyone else either misinterpreted Jackson as attacking the uncontroversial things that Ewell actually said and defended Ewell by attacking Jackson, or maybe some of them instead recognized that Jackson was attacking a misinterpretation and attacked him back for making a misinterpretation. Is that accurate, or am I also adding to the misinterpretations? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:30, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I think that's close, but let me respond a bit.

(1) It's probably unlikely that Ewell's statements could have been completely uncontroversial. Schenkerian analysis was a BIG part of music theory in the late 20th century. It is receding in importance now, but there are still a few (mostly older) theorists who firmly have their wagons hitched to it, and so any suggestion that it be reconsidered, especially for reasons as fraught as race, would likely have received pushback. On the other hand, there's responsible academic discourse, and there's... less responsible academic discourse. It's certainly possible to imagine a world in which JSS issue 12 was peer reviewed and contained only responsible scholarship, which nonetheless challenged Ewell's arguments on rational grounds.

(2) The first half is basically true, as long as you equate "Nazi" and "Nazi sympathizer." Jackson accuses "virtually the entire profession of music theory" of believing that Schenker was a Jewish Nazi Sympathizer in his Quillette piece. I am unaware of anyone who has actually taken that position.

As far as accusing all Schenkerians of racial animus - that was NOT Ewell's intent. Ewell was made a detailed case that Schenker was a racist, including carefully documenting the ways that his racism had been glossed over by prior scholars. As such, Ewell argued that anyone using Schenkerian methods needed to consider how that racism was "baked in" to their process. There's a subtle (and evidently difficult for many people to grasp) difference between saying "Schenkerian analysis has baked-in racism" and "Everyone using Schenkerian analysis is a racist."

(3) I don't think it's accurate to say that Jackson took Ewell's paper as a personal attack. Ewell didn't mention Jackson at all in his talk. (And has largely refused to discuss him since.) Rather, lets say that Jackson took Ewell's attack on Schenker personally, and chose to launch an attack on the messenger.

(4) I think that's phrasing it a bit more complicated than it needs to be. The strength of the outcry was due to the perceived extremity of the content in the JSS issue. In turn, proper academic editorial processes would have weeded out the vitriol and ad hominem attacks on Ewell, and once it became clear how far Jackson had gone in ignoring editorial standards, that became a major issue as well.

So Jackson was criticized on both fronts - both for skipping academic rigor to produce a volume with a LOT of fundamental problems, and for his own contributions being among the most problematic. PianoDan (talk) 17:47, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@PianoDan, you write that "As far as accusing all Schenkerians of racial animus – that was NOT Ewell's intent." Yet, Ewell wrote (MTO 26.2, [4.1.2]): "I argue that Schenkerian theory is an institutionalized racialized structure—a crucial part of music theory’s white racial frame—that exists to benefit members of the dominant white race of music theory." This seems rather clearly attacking all Schenkerians – and all white music theorists – in rather violent terms. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 18:24, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Sigh. "There's a subtle difference between saying "Schenkerian analysis has baked-in racism" and "Everyone using Schenkerian analysis is a racist." - Me, three paragraphs ago.

Saying that Schenkarian theory supports a racialized way of framing music theory is not the same as saying that everyone that uses it is racist. Here's another Ewell quote from the same paper (section 8.1): "If Schenkerian theory is to survive in the twenty-first century, as I hope it does, we must confront the uncomfortable realities not just of Schenker himself but, more important, of the legacy of how we have engaged with his ideas and what that means with respect to race in American music theory. Racial matters are difficult to discuss, but there is no good reason for not doing so, even if such discussion is uncomfortable." Those aren't the words of someone dismissing all Schenkerians as irredeemable.

Also quite telling is the quote from Debby Irving that Ewell chose to open the section: "The purpose of identifying and examining the dominant white culture is not to prove that white people are racist or that everything white people think and do is wrong. It’s a way to provide feedback along the lines of “here are some dominant white culture ways of thinking and acting that are holding back efforts to dismantle racism.”"

We are getting quite far down the rabbit hole of discussing Ewell on Jackson's page here - I think it's still germane to the questions @David Eppstein is posing, but at some point we do risk wandering completely off the topic of THIS article.PianoDan (talk) 20:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

In the meantime, I took the time to look up and read Jackson's symposium piece. The first half (up to around footnote six) seems unobjectionable, largely in the vein of acceptance that Schenker said a lot of racist things but critiqueing some overreaches by Ewell (I have no expertise to determine the accuracy of any of this critique) and setting this in a larger general context of late-19th and early-20th-century societal attitudes, including a mix of racism, nationalism, and anti-semitism. If Jackson had stopped there I think we would all be a lot happier. Instead, it veers into material that comes across as off-topic and straight-up racist about how horrible Jackson thinks Black people and their rap music are. I was trying to determine whether it was fair for our article to quote "anti-Black statements and personal ad hominem attacks" as being about Jackson, when it might have been about other participants in the symposium instead, but unfortunately I think it really is fair. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:50, 20 February 2022 (UTC)