Dayenu at Yale
A conference at Yale inspires this little variant on the classic Passover songs Chad Gadya (“One Little Goat”) and Dayenu (“It would have been enough!”) The “he” in the verse is God.
Had He only convened a conference on the Age of Revolution at Yale—Yale!—it would have been enough. Dayenu!
Had He only convened a conference on the Age of Revolution at Yale—Yale!—at which there were no women panelists, it would have been enough. Dayenu!
Had he only convened a conference on the Age of Revolution at Yale—Yale!—at which there were no women panelists, and called the center that organized the conference “The Center for the Study of Representative Institutions,” it would have been enough. Dayenu!
Discover more from Corey Robin
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
6 Comments
-
Do we know whether the promoter(s) attempted to find a woman scholar to speak at the panel? I think it is not dayenu to attack before we find that out.
In reviewing recent biographies on Thomas Paine, for example, I was struck by the dearth of living women cited. It’s a Saturday morning, and I admit I am a bit tired, but I counted only three in two different recent Paine bios out of hundreds of writers cited.
I have to ask this question: Is it really all that important for every single university academic conference that there be gender equality? How about racial equality? How about ethnic equality? At some point, such attacks as Professor Robin has made trivializes sexual disparities that otherwise exist in our society.
-
Gender equality? There is not a single woman panelist in this entire conference. And yes there are plenty of women scholars, as well as scholars of color, they could have asked to participate in this. Whether they did, I don’t know, but it’s rare in this field that you see a conference of all white men.
As for trivializing gender disparities in society, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m pointing out an instance of those disparities. And your response is “is it really all that important for every single university academic conference that there be gender equality.” Which shows that you both haven’t paid attention to what’s been said — again, that there are NO women in this conference, not that 1/2 the panelists aren’t women — and that the fact that there are none doesn’t seem to bother you very much. So remind me: who exactly is trivializing gender disparities?
-
-
You say there are “plenty” of women scholars on this subject. Well, so far I don’t see “plenty.” It is trivial because it’s one conference of three panel discussions on one subject at one university in less than one day. Will we find, if we looked around, other panels with no men on them? Undoubtedly. This particular instance tells us little if not nothing about gender inequality. Again, that’s what makes it trivial.
-
Perhaps you don’t “see ‘plenty’” because you don’t know the field. Off the top of my head, there’s Linda Zerilli, Elizabeth Anderson, Virginia Sapiro, Marilyn Butler, Jane Hodson, Vanessa Ryan, Eileen Botting…
What makes this particular conference different is that it is sponsored by the Center for the Study of *Representative* Institutions. It seems strange that a conference convened by an institute dedicated to the study of representative institutions should feature panels that are so unrepresentative. -
I defer to your knowledge and admit my not knowing this subject all that well at all. I saw Ms. Butler and Ms. Anderson listed in the bibliographies I consulted, but I don’t know the others you mention. I just felt you were being too snarky in not finding out if there was any attempt to find a woman for the three panels. If there was no attempt, and no thought to do so, then I would agree they deserve deep criticism.
-
Anon Grad Student
The least they could have done was to look inside their own department to find women to include. This search would’ve yielded at least Karuna Mantena and Helene Landemore (not to mention Seyla Benhabib and others) as more-than-capable presenters. The fact that they didn’t make it a priority to include at least one woman speaks to the persistence of a good-old-boys culture in a certain sector of Yale’s political theory faculty.