I have been quite busy and have not had time to post much over the past few days. Chris S keeps up the good work and has this new tip:
Correction: French philosopher story
IRVINE, Calif. – In a Feb. 14 story about a lawsuit involving the writings of French philosopher Jacque Derrida, The Associated Press reported erroneously on the status of the case. The University of California, Irvine, is negotiating with the family and has not dropped the suit, according to Christine Byrd, a spokeswoman for the university. She intends to release more details if an agreement is reached.
February 20, 2007 at 12:51 am
The following appeared Feb 19 in the LA Times.
Faculty fought against litigation
February 19, 2007
Re “UC Irvine plans to drop its lawsuit seeking French philosopher’s papers,” Feb. 14
I was one of a small group of UC Irvine professors who met a few weeks ago with a member of the central administration to argue that it was not only the right thing to do but also in the best interests of the university to withdraw the lawsuit filed against the family of Jacques Derrida. We were pleased the university responded positively to our request. The faculty at UCI was never consulted before the university filed its lawsuit and, had it been informed, would have worked to convince the librarians and administrators involved not to proceed for sound professional reasons.
The faculty learned about the lawsuit by chance only about a month ago, at which time a group of us immediately took action to oppose it.
We are pleased that amicable discussions are again occurring and that the invaluable resource Derrida so generously gave to UCI will continue to be available to us and scholars from across the country and throughout the world.
DAVID CARROLL
Professor of French
UC Irvine
Source:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-monday19.6feb19,0,7529997.story
February 21, 2007 at 4:31 pm
UC Irvine needs to drop the law suit altogether, immediately, and try to forget about it, if its credibility is not to become associated with and the nickname of stubborn stupidity and ridiculous greediness. It is simply phantastic how far UC Irvine already has gone to get a hold on those papers: acting like a paper machine that post mortem kills Derrida to increase its prestige, that is, what it thinks to be prestige, a conception of theirs, however, that is rather anachronistic, unsustainable. We have to ask: is UC Irvine really interested in Derrida’s thought, and if not, what? In a sense those responsible for filing the law suit have already done great harm to UC Irvine, to the very dignity, reputation and recognition it had built by having Derrida integrated with such friendly openness. It is all a shame. I fancy one will file a law suit against those law suit filers.
February 25, 2007 at 9:19 pm
A further update from the LA Times
A philosophical view of sex
Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida reportedly had tried to use his coveted archives as leverage to derail a sexual harassment case against a professor at UC Irvine.
By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2007
When a vampire expert allegedly seduced a tipsy UC Irvine student four years ago, he inadvertently set off a chain of events that now jeopardizes the school’s control of a dead philosopher’s prized archives.
The story came to light after UCI announced last week that it would drop a lawsuit against the widow and sons of philosopher Jacques Derrida, the acclaimed founder of deconstruction, an influential but bewildering theory that questions the concept of absolute truth.
In 1990, Derrida signed an agreement to donate his scholarly papers to UCI, where he taught part time. But after his death in 2004, Derrida’s heirs began questioning the pact. The university tried to negotiate, then sued three months ago, a maneuver that outraged professors in California and beyond.
Buried in the news that UCI would resume negotiations with Derrida’s family was a mysterious footnote: The feud over his archives was sparked by a letter Derrida sent to UCI shortly before his death.
In it, the pipe-puffing Frenchman threatened to pull the plug on the archives because he was furious about “some things the university was doing,” said Peggy Kamuf, a USC professor and Derrida friend.
Kamuf wouldn’t elaborate, but details have slowly emerged. According to multiple sources, Derrida wanted UCI to halt its investigation of a Russian studies professor, Dragan Kujundzic, who was accused of sexually harassing a 25-year-old female doctoral student. So he tried to use his archives as leverage to derail the case, they said.
UCI officials declined to comment on Derrida’s letter or Kujundzic last week. But court records from a lawsuit filed by the doctoral student might fill in some of the gaps.
The 2004 sexual harassment lawsuit contends that Kujundzic, who taught a popular class on vampires and signed his e-mails with a colon to symbolize Dracula bite marks, used his position as the student’s advisor to manipulate her into a series of sexual encounters.
Thirty minutes after they met at a reception for new students in September 2003, Kujundzic invited the woman to his apartment to view photos of Moscow, court records said.
There, he plied the student with Transylvanian wine and opera music, then kissed and groped her, according to the lawsuit. The woman said she fended off the married professor’s entreaties to have intercourse but performed oral sex on him that night and again the following evening.
They rendezvoused twice more before she filed a formal complaint with school officials. She admitted initiating one of the trysts.
Kujundzic, 47, who left Irvine in 2005 for a job at the University of Florida, told campus investigators the fling was “voluntary and consensual.”
The student said she felt coerced to engage in sex or risk having her academic career ruined.
UCI’s probe of the affair sided with neither party. Investigator Gwen Thompson concluded the relationship was consensual but said Kujundzic violated a university policy that barred professors from dating students they supervised.
Kujundzic argued that he wasn’t the student’s advisor, an assertion UCI rejected. In mid-2004, university officials began weighing penalties for the Serbian-born professor.
Derrida, who at the time was dying from pancreatic cancer, tried to intervene.
“Toward the end of his life, he enjoyed the same status as Aristotle among the ancients, and every perception of injustice was routed to his desk,” said Avital Ronell, a Derrida protege who teaches at New York University. “Even as he was crawling with fatigue, he put himself in the service of those seeking his help and needing the strength of his prestigious signature.”
UCI was apparently unmoved. On Aug. 31, school officials demoted Kujundzic, reduced his salary, banned him from campus without pay for two quarters and ordered him into sexual-harassment counseling, according to court records.
Kujundzic and the University of California were later sued in Orange County Superior Court by the student, a case that was settled out of court this month for an undisclosed amount.
Derrida’s archives, caught in the crossfire, remain in limbo. Last fall, after negotiations broke off between UCI and Derrida’s heirs, the school sued his family, which lives in France.
“What’s absurd is that the University of Irvine attacked me at the very moment I was trying to come to an understanding with them,” Derrida’s widow, Marguerite, told Le Monde last week. (She didn’t respond to a Times request for comment.)
Talks resumed when UCI promised to drop the lawsuit, but Derrida’s widow said she still had no intention of handing over his papers.
“What’s essential for me is to respect the wishes of Jacques,” she told Le Monde.
UCI will keep the archives it already has, but everything else will go to the Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives in France, she said, “and the two institutions will arrange between themselves to exchange copies. All this is in the process of being negotiated.”
Meanwhile, Internet observers have begun satirizing the archive dispute. Referring to Derrida’s 1990 written agreement to donate his papers to UCI, one blogger wrote, “Given that Derrida’s philosophical legacy is the notion that words have no meaning, shouldn’t the bright minds at UC Irvine have realized that ‘an agreement he signed’ might not be worth much?”
*
roy.rivenburg@latimes.com
source:
http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-me-derrida25feb25,1,3020644.story?coll=la-headlines-business-careers&ctrack=1&cset=true
June 19, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Those of you who have rightly sensed the depth of shame reached by UCI in this “affair” will no doubt want to consult this webiste for the authentic information about the whole matter. It has just become available on the web.
http://www.jacques-derrida.org/UCI_Affair.html