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1/ Not sure how exactly to articulate this but after sitting with the news and reading others’ reactions for the past two days, it strikes me that there is something deeply hypocritical about the reaction of some (mostly senior men) scholars to the revelations about Jan.
2/ These are people who want everyone to distinguish between his research and his now-revealed character by continuing to cite his work. I agree with those who have pointed out that this impulse is about the maintenance of white patriarchy from which these scholars benefit,
3/ but I think it is also at least partially a result of a particular myth of meritocracy: Jan arose to the height of the field based on his great scholarship and, the thinking goes, he must *therefore* also be a good guy.
4/ These people have a hard time confronting the moral issues here because they know his scholarship is good - which it is - and this creates a desire to also affirm that he is a good guy. How could someone have so much power in the field if they are not good?
5/ This is based in part on the fact that some of these people are high achievers in the field, and they want to believe that there is a moral dimension to their own professional success: if my work is good, I too am good.
6/ Those of us (mostly younger scholars) who have only known a dismal job market, have struggled, and have seen everyone around us struggle know that the field is absolutely not a meritocracy, and we thus don’t run into this cognitive dissonance.
7/ The rush to defend Jan’s work in spite of his character is based on a need to see one’s work and one’s character as intimately connected just as much, if not moreso, than is the impulse to condemn his work along with his character.
