I promised Katie Watson, editor and founder of Atrium, that I would publish anything she had to write about Atrium. I further promised that I would post what she sent on Bad Cripple without change. Below is word for word what Watson sent me.
GUEST POST FROM PROFESSOR
KATIE WATSON, EDITOR OF ATRIUM
(RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR
PEACE’S BLOG POSTS OF MAY 20 & JUNE 16, 2015)
Dear Bill,
I’m surprised and disappointed you chose to make public a personal
correspondence in which, out of respect for you and our years of positive
professional interactions, I shared the confidential details of a difficult
situation. But following your lead I will respond in a similarly public way –
both to the topics you raise, and to more general questions about the current
status of Atrium.
As you note, in my role as Editor and founder of Atrium, I refused to
comply with an administrative desire to single out your essay. I did not agree
that publishing it was a mistake and therefore refused to apologize, and I steadfastly
defended your work and that of your guest editor. Instead of allowing your
essay to be treated differently, I chose to temporarily take the entire Atrium
back catalogue off-line until things could be sorted out. Your article was not
the only topic on the table last summer— in a time of institutional change,
complex interpersonal dynamics, and new fiscal austerity, Atrium’s future and
several other large issues of great concern to our Program’s faculty and mission
were also in question.
So I was sorry to learn from your blog for the first time that my
email "horrified" you. I asked your thoughts about a potential temporary
work-around because addressing all these difficult topics in turn was indeed a
long process, and authors from earlier issues, as well as your guest editor,
were understandably eager to have their work back up. But I knew it was also important
to you that your essay was accessible through the Atrium website (not just
Dreger’s), so I was looking for a way to honor all these feelings of urgency.
What you wrote on your blog (5/20/15) about “the denial of sexuality
and disability” is powerful and incredibly important. That’s one reason I was
glad my Program paid for you to fly to Chicago last February to speak about this
topic in a forum open to the entire medical school after the negative
administrative response to your essay. I thought the way you reclaimed a lost
history and honestly shared the experiences and emotions you had as a teenager was
a gift to all Atrium readers (myself included) who aren't part of that world. I
never heard the term "pornographic" applied to your piece, but
"the fight for sexual citizenship" is a wonderfully useful paradigm.
Those from what might be termed "majority sexualities" can indulge in
the luxury of silence, but self-preservation forces the discounted to speak up
about sex in ways that are sometimes less than genteel, and for that I applaud
you.
That said, I never heard anyone at Northwestern speak the objection
you name. That doesn’t mean it might not have been a factor for some –
discrimination by the educated is rarely open, and sex does seem to be a common
denominator in recent academic controversies.
The concern I did hear was about the depiction of sex between
clinicians and inpatients, so perhaps it’s helpful to name the theme of
provider-patient sex as another way your story “unsettles conventional norms.” It
is no justification for censorship, but some react to this topic with what I
interpret as a kind of "incest horror." A taboo against provider-patient
sex in the hospital provides clear role boundaries for those engaged in
intimate care in closed shared spaces, and can protect both from exploitation. In
your blog post you say, "obviously, sexual relations between patients and
health care providers is inappropriate," but that sentiment is not clearly
present in your essay. (I don't see this as an error; no essayist needs to
dilute his or her point of view in an effort to inhabit every other perspective
out there.) This may explain why I spent over an hour on the phone with a nurse
who has made significant professional contributions to disability rights, and
yet was shocked Atrium would publish a piece she viewed as both insulting and
threatening to women in her profession. Several other women who aren't nurses
told me they were afraid nurses might (and in their view, should) read it as
degrading. In contrast, an acquaintance who is the former Dean of a Nursing
School sent me an unsolicited email saying she thought the "Bad Girls"
issue of Atrium was spectacular. When I asked her thoughts about your piece
specifically, she replied, "[N]urses can be very touchy after all they've
been subject to by way of stereotype. It gets in the way sometimes of 'hearing'
larger points." Again, none of this should prompt suppression. Mixed
reactions are the norm in academic work, and I was happy to have all these
exchanges because they represent the diverse Atrium readership I've come to
know and love.
When
the objection to your essay arose, I understood myself to be defending not just
you and all past Atrium authors, but also future authors – all the challenging,
illuminating voices just as wonderful as yours that I knew I wouldn’t be able
to publish in the future if our Program’s larger issues weren’t resolved
positively. So my view that the journal’s future and past were linked, and that
this topic was also linked with my Program’s overall strength, accounts for
part of the delay. It would be fair for you to say that the future of the journal
that published your voice or program behind it is not your concern; that people
with disabilities are tired of being asked to wait. But in my role as Editor, I
thought it was my responsibility to take the time necessary to pursue all these
goals together. For example, when the objection to your essay arose I was in
the initial phase of assembling the next issue, which is reviewing proposals.
(Atrium first invites proposals responding to theme, not full articles.) But before
I could move forward with that step, the medical school required me to allow a
Vetting Committee to review my editorial choices and veto them if they were
perceived to conflict with other institutional interests. (It was not an
academic Editorial Board, as has been incorrectly reported elsewhere.) A week
after a disheartening meeting with this group, I learned Atrium’s print budget had
been eliminated, and I cancelled that issue-in-progress.
The good news is that, over the course of nine years, Northwestern's
medical school gave Atrium’s readers the gift of spending more than $200,000 (and
a portion of my time/salary) so the Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program
could produce, create, and distribute free of charge (in print to thousands and
to more through our website) a publication which many tell me is a forum unique
in our field and invaluable resource—and despite this financing of a non-peer
reviewed publication, the school never tried to control any content until this essay.
The bad news is that, in a time of change, my school stumbled. The question is
whether we can right ourselves and move forward.
Months
ago my Program Director gave me permission and authority to “take Atrium
private”—that is, to personally sell it to another institution or journal
publisher—if in my sole discretion that’s what I thought was best for the
publication. He did this in recognition of our changed environment, our
University’s broad protection of faculty member’s intellectual property, and
out of respect for my role as creator and sustainer of the publication. (Atrium
has no “editorial team,” as has been incorrectly reported elsewhere. I’m
thankful for the wise, generous input I’ve always received when I’ve asked my
colleagues for help, but formally speaking Atrium has been run by this one-person
editorial staff since 2005, with the exception of two times that colleagues
asked if they could guest edit an issue and I happily agreed (#10 Belling &
Czerwiec; #12 Dreger). The wonky “every 9 months” publication schedule was
because that’s as often as I could fit the work in on top of a full load of my
own teaching and scholarship.)
But
I have not yet acted on my option to take Atrium elsewhere because I think it’d
be best for my Program to continue to be represented by, as you put it Bill,
this “eclectic, high-quality academic journal known for pushing the edge.” I
hope the medical school and University will come to agree, and we can return to
Atrium’s prior practice of full academic freedom and zero editorial
interference. That’s why I was willing to be what may have seemed from the
outside as “unreasonably patient” with this process—because education,
collaboration, and cooling off take time, and because the Atrium question is
part of a larger fabric of institutional change that isn’t yet finished. I work
with good people in both the medical school and the hospital, and I remain
hopeful. But if I become convinced Atrium can no longer move forward with
integrity here, I will drop the publication’s MH&B and NU affiliations and
move it elsewhere, or I’ll throw a party for the terrific run it enjoyed and
end it.
The years I spent as a public interest lawyer before becoming a
professor have led me to see analogies between institutions like universities,
academic hospitals, and the ACLU. The pursuit of multiple important goals sometimes
causes internal conflicts of principle (eg some attorneys want to fight
abortion clinic harassment and others want to defend picketers' First Amendment
rights), and sometimes leads to tension with allies (eg a gay rights group is
unhappy the ACLU has chosen police brutality as its lead issue in a given year),
but over time it usually results in positive progress on all fronts. And
sometimes good institutions make mistakes. Apologists excuse them. Gadflies
punish them. Loyalists pursue restorative action to remedy them.
I'm truly sorry this has been an unpleasant experience for you, Bill.
I wish you all the best in your future work, and I thank you again for your important
contribution to Atrium.
Katie Watson, JD
Editor, Atrium
Assistant Professor, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program
Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine
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