TextBin - Online Text and Code Sharing

New Paste Browse

The letter serves as an initial response to accompany Dr. Larry Krasnoff’s 2019 Annual Evaluation, filed in his role as chair of the Philosophy Department.[1]

There is much to object to in his evaluation. Rather than an exhaustive point-by-point response to his many objectionable claims, I will restrict comments to his comments about my research. Comments on the legally actionable comments on my service and on exercising my free speech rights are the subject of an ongoing College investigation into the actions of Dr. Krasnoff, as well as an ongoing EEOC complaint. As such, I will not include them here.

In 2019 I had three peer-reviewed articles/book chapters appear in print, and produced additional articles/book chapters accepted for publication in 2020.

The 2019 articles were the following:

“Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence: ‘Allies,’ Mobbing, and Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Including a Case Study of Harassment of Transgender Women in Sport. In Overcoming Epistemic Injustice: Social & Psychological Perspectives, Ben Sherman and Stacey Gougen (eds.). Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 285-302.

“Luck and Norms.” The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck. Ian Church and Robert Hartman (eds.). Routledge, pp. 183-192.

“Participation in Sport is a Human Right, Even for Trans Women.” APA Newsletter: LGBTQ Issues in Philosophy, 19(1), pp. 10-14.

First, Dr. Krasnoff falsely claims that “Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” and “Luck and Norms” were not peer-reviewed: they were.

Both Routledge and Rowman and Littlefield are respected academic publishers with rigorous review processes. Articles published in edited volumes in philosophy undergo preliminary peer review by the volume editors. After the initial stage of review, the author makes revisions and resubmits their chapter. Editors then re-review the submission. If the editors decide that the submission is in acceptable form, the entire volume itself is subjected to review by the publisher. This often involves soliciting external review, much like monographs do.

It is a severe dismissal to claim that my chapters in academic, edited volumes are not peer-reviewed.

Second, both “Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” and “Luck and Norms” are works in epistemology.

“Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” is a work in epistemology, feminist epistemology, and trans philosophy.[2]

“Luck and Norms” is unambiguously a work in epistemology and metaphysics, plain and simple.

Third, I underwent tenure review in 2018.

Fourth, Dr. Krasnoff denied my request to have my 2018 evaluation performance rankings rollover for 2019.

The language of the Faculty Administration Manual is the following (p.130):

Tenured faculty and Senior Instructors may request the same performance

evaluation ratings that were given the previous year for up to two years. A

full performance evaluation must be conducted at least once every three

years, covering the calendar years since the last full performance

evaluation or major evaluation (i.e., review for tenure and/or promotion or

renewal as Senior Instructor, application for “superior” post-tenure review

reviewed by the Post-Tenure Review Committee).39 A faculty member

hired with tenure will undergo full performance evaluations in the faculty

member’s first and second years and at least every three years following.

(Rev. Aug. 2018)

Fifth, from what I can discern, Dr. Krasnoff has not denied this request to any other faculty in the Philosophy Department since his time as chair. That is, I am the only tenured faculty member who has had a request to rollover their performance evaluation ratings from their most recent full performance evaluation or major evaluation.

Sixth, part of Dr. Krasnoff’s justification for denying my request to rollover the performance ratings from my 2018 tenure review was “that the focus of your research has shifted from issues in epistemology and pragmatic philosophy of language to a particular area of applied ethics, the participation of transgender and intersex athletes in women’s sports.” He continues, “In the comments you sent me with your annual evaluation, you rejected this characterization, citing the two papers for the edited volumes published in 2019. Having read those two papers, I am actually more convinced that the characterization is accurate.”

In fact, it is entirely normal for a faculty member to shift their research focus post-tenure. That is no justification for denying a request to rollover evaluation ratings.

Seventh, Dr. Krasnoff has not published any work in my areas of research in epistemology, feminist epistemology, metaphysics of luck, trans philosophy, and sports ethics.

Eighth, “Luck and Norms” is a paper on why a particular problem in mainstream epistemology, whether so-called “Gettier cases” constitute knowledge or merely ‘justified true belief’ that isn’t knowledge. This is a central topic in mainstream epistemology.

Ninth, in 2015-16 I supervised an Honors Thesis (PHIL499), by Steven Sanborn, on “Gettier Cases and Modal Accounts of Luck.” The topic of my “Luck and Norms” paper is precisely Gettier cases and my own (modal) account of luck.

Tenth, my 2019 “Luck and Norms” chapter is a third of a trilogy of articles I have published on the metaphysics of luck and its connection to normative evaluations of performances. Indeed, the topic and quality of the first two articles was precisely why I was invited to write the 2019 chapter. All articles/chapters underwent peer review.

11th, in his Evaluation, Dr. Krasnoff wrote of my 2019:

The “Luck and Norms” paper is highly derivative of the two earlier essays you published on luck, in 2013 and 2014. I don’t think this is in any way bad in itself: you should certainly follow up on and receive all the attention you deserve for the earlier work. But I did not see that the 2019 essay added much substantively to the earlier essays.

He also wrote that:

The luck essay was of solid enough quality, but given its relation to the earlier work, nothing special either.

I reject both characterizations that this paper is “highly derivative of the earlier two essays published on luck” and that “given its relation to the earlier work, [its quality is] nothing special either.”

12th, Dr. Krasnoff’s use of “nothing special either” is inflammatory and inappropriate, particularly by a non-expert who has never published in mainstream epistemology and/or the philosophy of luck.

13th, while “Luck and Norms” makes reference to my earlier accounts of the metaphysics of luck (building on 2013’s “Getting Luck Properly Under Control” and 2014’s “You Make Your Own Luck”), it is entirely devoted to applying my earlier work on the nature of luck to the sticky, foundational problem in mainstream epistemology of Gettier cases. It is not “derivative of the earlier two essays,” it is a significant expansion of the application of the previous two papers.

14th, “Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” is, again, a follow-up to my highly successful 2017 chapter, “Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice.”

15th, my 2017 “Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice” appeared in the edited volume, The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, edited by Ian James Kidd, Jose Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr.. My chapter has been cited 68 times thus far.

This chapter has more citations than any of Dr. Krasnoff’s individual works in the past 20 years.

16th, my 2019 paper concerns a significant revision to my 2017 paper, and a substantial application of my account of gaslighting to include gaslighting as a cause of posttraumatic stress disorder. That is the argument in the paper: gaslighting is better understood as epistemic violence, not merely epistemic injustice, and that gaslighting can cause PTSD.

17th, this 2019 paper is the culmination of my continued work on this topic, including my invited presentation of this argument at the 2017 “Gaslighting and Epistemic Injustice” conference at Claremont-McKenna College. My 2017 “Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice,” evidenced by the similarity in the conference’s title, was a central topic of every speaker’s presentation, many of them constructively critical. The 2019 paper involved accumulating these constructive critiques, and I make explicit reference to this in the paper.

18th, I am a world-leading expert on the topic of epistemic injustice, and particularly gaslighting. Within philosophy, I was commissioned to write the Philosophy Compass article on “Epistemic Injustice” in 2016. Philosophy Compass’s ‘Overview’ reads as follows:

Unique in both range and approach, Philosophy Compass is an online-only journal publishing peer-reviewed survey articles of the most important research from and current thinking from across the entire discipline. In an age of hyper-specialization, Philosophy Compass provides an ideal starting point for the non-specialist, offering pointers for researchers, teachers and students alike, to help them find and interpret the best research in the field.

Articles in Philosophy Compass are routinely commissioned only by leading experts in a topic who can provide a topic-wide overview and introduction to non-experts.

19th, Dr. Krasnoff has not published any work in feminist epistemology, or on the topic of epistemic injustice.

20th, as such, Dr. Krasnoff is not qualified to make the claim whether a paper on epistemic injustice is “of questionable scholarly quality.” In his evaluation, Dr. Krasnoff wrote:

The new gaslighting essay was, in my own judgment, of rather questionable scholarly quality, resting far too heavily on one first-person account that is easily open to dispute.

He is mistaken.

21st, while the article does include a significant discussion of a case study, the case study is not part of the arguments. A case study is the object of analysis and the application of the arguments.

Dr. Krasnoff seems to be suggesting that articles that involve significant analysis of a detailed case study are “resting far too heavily on one first-person account that is easily open to dispute.” He is wrong.

22nd, in his 2017 Annual Evaluation, Dr. Krasnoff wrote the following about my 2017 article “Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice”:

You also published an editor-reviewed essay, "Allies Behaving Badly: Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice," in the Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. This piece is short and is the final product of presentations you have given since 2014, but the topic has been of broad interest, and it is good to see you getting formal credit for the essay this year.

…

What seems most impressive about that research program is how many strands it has. There is your work in pragmatic philosophy language, which led to your 2015 book on the norms of assertion, your work on the metaphysics of luck, your work on epistemic and other forms of injustice, and your work on gender and sports. There are epistemological and political themes that connect these projects, but really they represent for what many philosophers would be their exclusive lines of research. But you are making positive contributions in all of these areas. Your individual essays can be read with profit by those thinking about only one area, but your larger corpus is also making interesting connections among and between them

23rd, thus, in his 2017 evaluation, Dr. Krasnoff recognizes that both my work on gaslighting as epistemic injustice/violence and my work on the metaphysics of luck includes “epistemological and political themes that connect thee projects” and that it connects to my 2015 book, The Norms of Assertion (Palgrave Macmillan).

23th, therefore, my 2019 publications “Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” and “Luck and Norms” clearly falsify Dr. Krasnoff’s claim “that the focus of [my] research has shifted from issues in epistemology and pragmatic philosophy of language to a particular area of applied ethics, the participation of transgender and intersex athletes in women’s sports.”

25th, while “Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” contains the analysis of a case study of epistemic violence and mobbing against a transgender athlete, this is wholly separate from my work on “the participation of transgender and intersex athletes in women’s sports,” which focuses on the human rights of trans and intersex women to compete in women’s sports.

26th, my landmark 2020 article “Including Trans Women Athletes in Competitive Sport: Analyzing the Science, Law, and Principles and Policies of Fairness in Competition” is forthcoming in Philosophical Topics. That article makes no mention of harassment, gaslighting, and epistemic violence against trans women athletes in sport. The “Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” and trans/intersex women’s right to sport are distinct projects.

27th, the use of first-person account case studies is industry standard in applied ethics within philosophy, and particularly feminist philosophy and trans philosophy.

28th, Dr. Krasnoff’s dismissal of the “scholarly quality” of my “Gaslighting as Epistemic Violence” on this basis is wholly inappropriate, particularly as he has not published in any of the relevant topic areas.

29th, turning to my long-standing and ongoing project on trans and intersex women’s human right to sport participation, Dr. Krasnoff noted in his 2017 annual evaluation that I had already begun work on the topic, as quoted in above in §22.

30th, as noted in §6th, part of Dr. Krasnoff’s justification to deny my request to rollover my 2018 tenure evaluation ratings was that my research focus has shifted from issues in epistemology and pragmatic philosophy of language to a particular area of applied ethics, the participation of transgender and intersex athletes in women’s sports.” However, it cannot represent a shift in focus if I was already presenting and publishing work on this topic as early as 2017.

31st, Dr. Krasnoff seems to have wholly overlooked the prestigious presentations of my research that I gave in 2019.

In June 2019, I was invited to speak at a world-leading symposium at the French Embassy in Washington DC, “Hurdling Over ***: Sport, Science and Equity.” The invited speakers represent the leading minds in the world on the question of intersex and trans women’s inclusion in women’s sport. This highly prestigious presentation was elided in Dr. Krasnoff’s evaluation.

32nd, Dr. Krasnoff also seems to have wholly overlooked my invitation to participate in first-of-their-kind in-person advisory meetings between experts on trans athlete inclusion and the International Olympic Committee. Among a highly select few other experts on the topic, I was flown to Lausanne, Switzerland to the historic headquarters of the IOC for day-long consultation meetings on inclusion of trans athletes in sport. I was invited as a world-leading expert on the topic and not merely as someone who happens to be a successful trans woman athlete.

33rd, Dr. Krasnoff also seems to have wholly overlooked the two keynote presentations that I gave on trans women athlete rights, including the October 2019 closing keynote at the PRIDE Sports Summit in Manchester, UK, and the November 2019 Outspoken Women in Triathlon Summit.

34th, in his evaluation, Dr. Krasnoff seems to dismiss my scholarly work on trans athlete rights as merely being an extension of “public philosophy.” He writes:

There is no doubt that this argument should allow you to have a continuing role in public debates. For the formative purposes of this evaluation, however, we need to evaluate the contribution the argument can make to the scholarly literature on the ethics of sports. As you know, our departmental guidelines say that contributions to public philosophy can count as research and not just service to the community only if the faculty member makes a convincing case and proposes convincing standards for the evaluation of the quality of the work.

35th, the American Philosophical Association’s “Statement on Valuing Public Philosophy” reads:

The American Philosophical Association values philosophers' participation in the public arena. This includes work that engages with contemporary issues as well as work that brings traditional philosophies to non-traditional settings. Public philosophy may also bring the discipline into dialogue with other humanities, the arts, natural sciences, social sciences, and interested people outside of academia. Public philosophy is done in a variety of traditional and non-traditional media. Public philosophy can be especially valuable when it reaches populations that tend not to have access to philosophy and philosophers. Further, the APA notes that public philosophy raises the profile of the discipline, the scholar, and the home institution.

The APA encourages departments, colleges, and universities to recognize public philosophy as a growing site of scholarly involvement. To that end, the APA encourages institutions to develop standards for evaluating and practices for rewarding public philosophy in decisions regarding promotion, tenure, and salary, so that faculty members who are interested in this work may, if they choose, pursue it with appropriate recognition and without professional discouragement or penalty. Although peer-reviewed scholarly publications remain central to the profession, the APA applauds philosophers' contributions to public policy, to consultation with government, medical, business, and civil society institutions, and to public opinion in general. Public philosophy presented or published outside of standard academic venues has evident value as external service to the profession and/or community. But we also urge institutions to consider broadening their standards for evidence of excellence in research and teaching and to consider whether their faculty’s work in public philosophy is more properly counted as contributing to these latter categories of faculty evaluation.

36th, my work on the topic of the human rights of trans athletes is primarily a scholarly project, and it is inaccurate, and a severe dismissal, to relegate it merel to “public philosophy,” as Dr. Krasnoff has done. My work has been vetted by peer review.

37th, my work on trans athlete rights began with an anonymous peer-reviewed presentation at the July 2017 International Sport and Society Conference in London, UK. It has also appeared, as Dr. Krasnoff noted, in the APA Newsletter on LGBTQ Issues, which is a peer-reviewed publication. As noted above, my 2020 paper is also a peer-reviewed work forthcoming in Philosophical Topics, which is a prestigious philosophy journal.

38th, in his 2019 evaluation, Dr. Krasnoff substantially misunderstands and misrepresents the ‘argument’ in this line of work: it is categorically not about “challeng[ing] the view that the normative basis for the distinction between men’s and women’s sports rests on the physiological differences between men’s and women’s biology.”

39th, in fact, my work on this topic is about how such physiological differences, insofar as they even exist, are largely irrelevant to the real issue: whether trans women have the right to compete in women’s sport as women. Dr. Krasnoff has completely misunderstood the point of my line of work on this topic.

40th, this point can be easily gleaned merely from reading the abstract of my forthcoming 2020 paper:

In this paper, we examine the scientific, legal, and ethical

foundations for inclusion of transgender women athletes in competitive

sport, drawing on IOC principles and relevant Court of Arbitration for

Sport decisions. We argue that the inclusion of trans athletes in

competition commensurate with their legal gender is the most consistent

position with these principles of fair and equitable sport. Biological

restrictions, such as endogenous testosterone limits, are not consistent

with IOC and CAS principles. We explore the implications for recognizing

that endogenous testosterone values are a ‘natural physical trait’ and

that excluding legally recognized women for high endogenous

testosterone values constitutes discrimination on the basis of a natural

physical trait. We suggest that the justificatory burden for such prima

facie discrimination is unlikely to be met. Thus, in place of a limit on

endogenous testosterone for women (whether cisgender, transgender, or

intersex), we argue that ‘legally recognized gender’ is most fully in line

with IOC and CAS principles.

It can also be gleaned by simply reading my 2019 article, on page 11:

But I want to explain why this is largely irrelevant. Trans athletes’ rights to compete are not contingent on showing that there isn’t a competitive advantage.

I make very clear in my writing that what Dr. Krasnoff, as a non-expert, takes as a central objection that I must respond to is, indeed as an expert myself, irrelevant to the arguments I am making.

41st, as noted above, Dr. Krasnoff has neither published nor even presented any work on sports ethics, let alone the question of trans athlete inclusion in sport.

42nd, therefore, Dr. Krasnoff is wholly unqualified to “evaluate the contribution the argument can make to the scholarly literature on the ethics of sports.” While he may have taught a course on Sport and Ethics, there is no evidence of his general command of “the scholarly literature on the ethics of sport” and the specific topic of trans inclusion in sport.

43rd, in none of my previous annual evaluations has a department chair commented on the degree to which any specific argument of mine makes “to the scholarly literature” on a given topic.

44th, I suspect that Dr. Krasnoff has not made such comments in any of his annual evaluations for other members of the Philosophy Department.

If this is true, then I am likely receiving unfair disparate treatment. One can only speculate whether it is because the work that Dr. Krasnoff calls “of questionable scholarly quality” involves a case study of harassment that a trans woman athlete received, and that I am a world-famous trans woman athlete.

45th, in addition to apparently ignoring my scholarly presentations on trans athlete rights in 2019, he has also apparently ignored my high profile op-ed articles on the same topic, with additional articles on general issues of transphobia.

46th, in 2018, I published an op-ed in the Washington Post. Since this was after my tenure review packet was submitted, I did not receive evaluation credit for this.

47th, in 2019 I published ten (10) pieces in high-profile media outlets. I placed articles in The New York Times, Newsweek, Newsweek, NBC News, VICE, DIVA Magazine, Chatelaine, Pinknews, OutSports, and Compete Network. All of these articles were published as an extension of my scholarly work on fairness and trans inclusion in sport, and on general issues of transphobia. And all of these were listed on my CV as part of the evaluation documents sent to Dr. Krasnoff for the 2019 evaluation.

48th, in his evaluation, Dr. Krasnoff makes no mention of these high-profile public articles. These would be more properly classed as “public philosophy.”

49th, in his evaluation Dr. Krasnoff continually misrepresents the content of my work on trans athlete rights. He writes:

For your opponents, this supposed normative standard should exclude transgender women from competition in women’s sports, unless they meet some physiological standards, specified in some way. You challenge this argument in many ways, but you also have thus far evaded what might seem like the theoretically most important question: what is the normative basis for the distinction between men’s and women’s sports? You argue that the distinction simply exists as a practice, and thus should be governed by the same legal and human rights standards that should govern all our practices. And you argue that the supposed normative basis is not the historically or empirically true one, that women’s sports were in fact invented to keep women in a subordinate position. But none of this challenges your opponents’ conviction that the above standard should be the normative basis for what they understand as the justified distinction between men’s and women’s sports. None of it takes up the question of whether you think there is any normative justification for, and thus should be, a distinction between men’s and women’s sports. Maybe you don’t have to have an answer of your own to this question, but then you need a compelling answer to the question of why you don’t have to answer it.

I go into this level of detail because I think that the way you address this particular question is likely to be the decisive factor in assessing the quality (and not just the quantity, which is thus far beyond question) of your new line of work. If you have a theoretically compelling response, then I think you are likely to be judged as having made an important contribution to this area of applied ethics. If you simply evade the question, then I think you are likely to be judged as doing less than philosophically successful work. Given your current trajectory, this question is likely to be at the heart of the evaluation of your research if and when you apply for promotion to Professor.

50th, as noted repeatedly above, Dr. Krasnoff is not an expert on issues of gender in sport. It is wholly inappropriate, then, for a non-expert to go into detail on what specific arguments a faculty member under review ought to make and how the presence or absence of such arguments may bear on a faculty member’s application for promotion to Professor.

51st, Dr. Krasnoff is wholly mistaken to write that “And you argue that the supposed normative basis is not the historically or empirically true one, that women’s sports were in fact invented to keep women in a subordinate position.”

I do not. And, much more importantly, such claims are irrelevant to my line of work, which I clearly indicate in my work on the matter.

52nd, I have never heard of a department chair, in an annual evaluation, going into this level of detail on the specifics of arguments that a faculty member under review makes, and how responding to such arguments would bear on that faculty member’s future promotion evaluation.

53rd, I suspect that Dr. Krasnoff has never done this to any other Philosophy Department faculty in his annual evaluations.

54th, therefore, once again it seems that I am being singled out for disparate treatment.

55th, it is typical for a chair only to note the broad topic and venue--and perhaps quality of venue--of published works, and how such works connect to a faculty member’s broader research output. Dr. Krasnoff restricted his annual evaluation comments to this, in fact, in my 2017 evaluation.

56th, I ask, if three peer-reviewed articles/chapters in respected outlets, ten op-ed popular media articles in outlets including The New York Times, NBC News, Newsweek, and VICE, two keynote addresses, three additional invited scholarly speaking engagements, and the dozens of popular media interviews I completed in 2019 is insufficient to acquire a rating of ‘Excellent’ in research, what are the standards?

57th, it is a minor point, but according to Google Scholar, since 2015 Dr. Krasnoff has had 90 citations, an h-index of 5, and an i-10 index of 3.

Since 2015, I have had 382 citations, an h-index of 10, and an i-10 index of 11.[3]

58th, therefore, I reject both the rating of ‘Very Good’ rather than ‘Excellent’ given to my research and the various characterizations, mischaracterizations, and disparate treatment of my research.

Respectfully submitted June 5, 2020

Dr. Veronica Ivy*

Associate Professor

Department of Philosophy

College of Charleston

*: Previously, ‘Rachel McKinnon’

[1] Link to the annual evaluation: https://bit.ly/2019evaluationDrIvy
[2] ‘Trans philosophy’ refers to the philosophical study of the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming people.
[3] Krasnoff: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HIpWxccAAAAJ&hl=en Ivy [McKinnon]: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8snP7l8AAAAJ&hl=en#

Paste Settings

Paste Title : [Optional]

Paste Folder : [Optional]

Syntax Highlighting : [Optional]

Paste Expiration : [Optional]

Paste Status : [Optional]

Password : [Optional]

Description: [Optional]

Tags: [Optional]

Encrypt Paste (?)

You are currently not logged in, this means you can not edit or delete anything you paste. Sign Up or Login

Paste Settings

Site Languages