At the University of North Texas, the Mob Comes Calling for a Music Theorist

By Samantha Harris. Samantha Harris is a campus disciplinary attorney and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Excerpt:

"You might think music theory is an academic area that’s safe from the illiberal mob, but a University of North Texas professor has learned otherwise.

Chances are you have never heard of the music theorist Heinrich Schenker or the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, a publication at the University of North Texas (UNT) devoted to “all facets of Schenkerian thought, including theory, analysis, pedagogy, and historical aspects.” But that journal, and, in particular, the UNT music-theory professor Timothy Jackson, who oversees it, are now at the center of a controversy that goes to the heart of whether we are truly a free society. Can people speak their minds, or will those who express dissenting opinions be destroyed by a mob they can neither challenge nor resist?

In the most recent issue of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, Jackson published a critique of a plenary address given by the music theorist Philip Ewell to the Society for Music Theory. Ewell posited “a ‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized.” In particular, Ewell accused Schenker (1868–1935) of being racist, therefore suggesting that his work in music theory is tainted.

For Jackson to have questioned Ewell’s thesis and defended Schenker against the charge of racism was seen as nothing short of heresy. UNT graduate students and faculty, as well as music professors across the country, are now demanding that Jackson be investigated, his journal shut down, and his position eliminated. A group of graduate students in UNT’s Division of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology issued a statement calling on the university to “hold accountable every person responsible for the direction of the publication” of the journal. “This should also extend to investigating past bigoted behaviors by faculty,” they wrote, “and, by taking this into account, the discipline and potential removal of faculty who used the [Journal of Schenkerian Studies] platform to promote racism. Specifically, the actions of Dr. Jackson — both past and present — are particularly racist and unacceptable.” A group of UNT faculty piled on, circulating a petition “endors[ing] the call for action” by the graduate students.

In other words, these students and faculty are not only calling for Jackson’s head for expressing his views in his journal article, they want the university to launch a witch hunt to see what else they can dig up on him. And today, the dean of the UNT College of Music, John Richmond, announced that UNT is opening that investigation in the name of “reaffirm[ing] our dedication to combatting [sic] racism on campus and across all academic disciplines.”

Any professor in Jackson’s position — that of stating a view that goes against prevailing campus opinion — should be terrified. College administrators are not exactly profiles in courage when it comes to standing up to the mob, typically preferring to roll over in the hopes that they won’t be next. (Spoiler alert: They will be next.)

It is particularly ominous that Jackson’s critique of a fellow scholar falls wholly within the scope of academic freedom that UNT promises to its faculty. Jackson is not a professor going viral after mouthing off on Twitter, although those professors need protection too. He offered a serious critique of that scholar’s work, based on archival research within his highly specialized field, and after lifelong study of Schenker specifically and music theory more generally. He now has a legitimate fear that he may lose his job and be rendered persona non grata at any other institution. Questioning the current campus orthodoxy even in the context of serious academic inquiry is now considered a capital offense by the growing number of people who, as Daniel Schwammenthal put it earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, “seem to understand George Orwell’s ‘1984’ not as a warning but as a manual.”"