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[Gary Saul Morson]

Frankly, I don't think Caryl Emerson needs to be defended, and if she did,
she could do it herself.

        But there is a more important issue involved.   It is one thing to
criticize a scholar's work  on scholarly grounds -- it makes errors, its
argument is unpersuasive, there are gaps in logic, etc.    But it is quite
another to do so by alleging motives.   This form of argument is wrong not
only because a Prof. Khanin can have no idea what the motives really were,
but also, and more importantly, because even if the motives are bad, the
argument might still be right (and vice versa, for that matter). If
Einstein had the worst motives for E = mc2 or Bakhtin for describing
Dostoevsky's novels as polyphonic, that is entirely irrelevant to whether
their theories are correct.   Prof. Knanin's SEEJ letter disturbs me not
because it criticizes Caryl, but because of its mode of argument, which, I
think, is fundamentally hostile to what scholarship is all about and
therefore causes damage to the profession.   The offense is not just to
Caryl, but to all of us.

Gary Saul Morson
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Gary Saul Morson
Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities
Professor of Slavic Languages
Kresge Hall
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL   60208-2206.   847-491-3651
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