ON THE SEMANTICS OF "CONSENSUS"

In 2002, Jon Butler sent a fiercely volatile anti-union mailing to every graduate student in his department. He then wrote an op-ed in the Yale Daily News (I'd link it, but the server seems to be down -- this would never be the case if Jia Lynn were still in charge!) urging professors to condemn the union and make clear their opposition to graduate student organizing in ways which make clear their power in managing and evaluating graduate students' lives. He also rewrote, in the same article, the sordid history of the 1995-6 grade strike, omitting any mention of the vile harassment and intimidation tactics Butler and other members of the faculty used to crush the strike and instead fallaciously and dishonestly painting GESO as the intimidators and purveyors of violence. (Let's not forget his presence at that infamous YCC meeting in the spring of 2002 during which everyone's favorite hypocrites attempted to, while claiming to be 'pro-labor,' resolve that Yale should never enter into a neutrality agreement with anyone ever, testifying in favor of the resolution amidst Matt Robinson's disgustingly pompous claims that he knew more about card check than David Sanders, Lis Pimentel (who vid tried to boot from the room for calling him on his BS,) and Michael Denning, to name a few.) More recently, J-B, whose latest innovation as department chair has been to introduce draconian registration requirements which limit people's ability to do creative and innovative dissertation research, threw a hissy fit at this year's AHA convention in an attempt to prevent the association from urging Yale to negotiate a fair process with GESO.

I wish I could believe that Butler was a "new consensus builder," as this Herald article claims, that this statement were valid and made in good faith:

Butler suggested that regardless of his position in the past which he stressed has been "concerned more with tactics than the issue itself," his stance on graduate unionization in general will be one where, "the issue of unionization is an issue for students to settle. Students appear to have many different points of view on that question and they need to settle that question."

Given the history of Butler's interactions with graduate students in his department and what appears to be his vision for the future of the academy though, I doubt that he will actually practice what he is preaching. It looks like the next year is going to be combatative and crazy, and i'm feeling ambivalent about the fact that i'm not going to be around for it.  ¶ 3:01 PM