A kind reader alerted us yesterday to this apology from Royall Elementary School in Florence, South Carolina. School started there this week, and to welcome students back, Royall offered an “Olympic parade,” celebrating the Olympic prowess of different countries. Fun!

Behold, the depiction of Mexico!

A wall. Border patrol agents. And a cantina.

Many parents, unsurprisingly, were dismayed. “It’s disheartening. It’s sad. It’s offensive. It’s inappropriate all the way around,” Florence 1 Schools parent Annette Fling said in a text message to local news outlet The Post and Courier. 

The school removed the post and posted an apology. Here it is:

SorryWatch’s correspondent correctly assessed this statement as “passive-voice mouth noises.”

Let us compare this piece of caca to our Helpful Good-Apology Rubric:

The statement offers “regret,” an emotion that takes no responsibility for the feelings of others; regret only about how the speaker feels. The word “apologize,” which focuses on the feelings of the harmed party, doesn’t appear until the final sentence. And this is key: The statement fails to say precisely what the “regret” is about. A picture that “showed insensitive disregard for the challenges our Hispanic population faces”? What the heck does that mean? What did the picture depict? (It’s gone, so we have no idea.) Was it the handsome 10-year-old gelding H5 Porthos Maestro Wh Z, the Mexican team’s show-jumping horse tragically forced to withdraw from the Olympics for veterinary reasons? (All healing wishes to Porthos.) Was it the fact that so few people watched Mexico win its very first judo medal ever?

Come to think of it, why should a parade purporting to celebrate Mexico depict “challenges our Hispanic population faces”? Why not, um, celebrate Mexico? But PLOT TWIST, the picture actually DID depict the challenges the Hispanic population faces, by illustrating the very racism that has a huge impact on students in school settings, as well as a total lack of appreciation of the complexity and beauty of Mexican culture AND a lack of glorification of Mexican Olympic athleticism! So you go, Royall!

Here’s what a good apology does: Takes responsibility, names the offense, acknowledges WHY the act was hurtful, explains the steps being taken to ensure that the bad thing doesn’t happen again, and makes amends. None of these elements appear in this statement. And now you’ve tried to hide what the images showed, and you don’t describe the images, folks will have no idea what the apology is for.

The region’s School Superintendent, Richard O’Malley, weighed in: “Today this matter has been thoroughly investigated and those who contributed to this event have been held accountable for their decision-making and actions.”

Great. What does “thoroughly investigated” mean? What does “have been held accountable” mean? Were there consequences? Who was interviewed? Whose idea was it to dress as border agents and make a border wall? How do we know this won’t happen again? Is anyone at this school being educated about why Mexican identity isn’t a problem, but rather something to be celebrated? Will the naughty teachers and administrators be denied Chick-Fil-A boxes? (Chick Fil-A catered the staff development day depicted in the photo that is now the most recent picture on Royall’s page, post-Border-Wall-photo deletion.) Will the school continue to delete comments from anyone calling them to account?

Thankfully, a couple of screenshots exist, from before the Big Censoring, showing that the community wasn’t fooled.

They get it.

Today, the superintendent issued another statement, adding, “I wanted to inform you that, due to the serious nature of this incident, several employees are no longer employed by the district or have been placed on leave by the district’s administration.” OK, who was fired? Who was placed on leave? For how long? Paid or unpaid? Again, there’s a lack of transparency that’s unhelpful.

Let’s hope that individual teachers at Royall are able to show their Mexican students, and all Hispanic students, more grace, joy, and understanding than their administration.

 

 

Kurt Eichenwald was a college freshman. Liked Swarthmore, great roommates, fun. Mostly. Some weird worrisome health things – so he asked his parents if he could get checked out when he came home for Thanksgiving.

His father, a famed pediatrician, directed the family’s medical care. He despised doctors who weren’t academics, viewing them as incompetent money-grubbers. He arranged for his son to see a neurologist at the med school, a guy with a good reputation. Eichenwald says he had the bedside manner of a termite inspector.

Dr. Termite diagnosed epilepsy, told Eichenwald to keep it secret so as not to be shunned. Never say “epilepsy,” say “seizure disorder.” Forget law school, because law is stressful, and stress can trigger seizures. Also, better drop out of Swarthmore – too tough. Dr. Termite also put him on a low dose of the anticonvulsant Tegretol, later adding Depakene.

Eichenwald, horrified by his situation, followed Dr. Termite’s advice, except the part about dropping out. He was determined to stay at Swarthmore and graduate with his class. This wasn’t easy, given the increasing number of seizures he was having, but with help from his amazing roommates, he persisted.

His next neurologist was more upbeat, always ready to talk on the phone, hear about the seizures, and increase the drug dosages. He never suggested blood tests, and whenever Eichenwald described a problem – dizziness, nausea, bruising, drastic weight loss – Dr. Quitstressing always said he’d never heard of that as a side effect of the drugs. Probably stress! Soon Eichenwald was on 11 pills a day.

We’re leaving out the summer Eichenwald nearly died when his bone marrow shut down because the drugs had reached toxic levels. This caused Eichenwald’s mother to change the habits of a lifetime, defy her husband’s wrath, and talk Eichenwald into seeing a neurologist of last resort even though he worked at a for-profit hospital. This was Dr. Naarden (real name), whom Eichenwald says saved his life.

Eichenwald returned to Swarthmore feeling optimistic. He had a good doctor. There was a plan. Meanwhile, everyone said it would be good to see the school psychologist to help deal with the emotional impact of having epilepsy.

That’s where things got crazy. This psychologist, Schemer McPlotface, soon told everyone that Eichenwald didn’t have epilepsy, he had a brain tumor. He told everyone except Eichenwald, that is – his parents, other staff, and Dean Janet Dickerson. Dickerson called Eichenwald’s parents to tell them to take their son and his BRAIN TUMOR home, because he was too sick to be at Swarthmore.

Eichenwald’s parents asked WHY THE HELL McPlotface said there was a brain tumor. McPlotface said he could tell by the way the kid talked. This ridiculous diagnosis was quickly dropped – after his parents mobilized testimony from Dr. Naarden – without Eichenwald ever being told about it.

Meanwhile Eichenwald, knowing nothing about this, was busy taking classes, producing the spring musical, and singing in a barbershop group he’d co-founded. Tra la la, right?

McPlotface was undaunted. He told school officials that anyway, Eichenwald was too sick for school, that he wasn’t functioning well. He said Eichenwald was pretending to be in better shape than he really was. He told Eichenwald’s parents this, too.

Eichenwald was called into an official meeting. Dean Dickerson explained that he needed to leave school. “You’re not well,” she said. “You’re not functioning academically and you’re not functioning socially. You need to go home and get care so you can handle college.”

Eichenwald disagreed. It was too early in the semester for anyone to say he wasn’t functioning academically, he pointed out. There hadn’t been any graded assignments, papers, or tests.

“You’ve had midterms,” said the dean. No – his first one was next week. So why did she say he wasn’t functioning? “That’s just what I’ve heard.” She wouldn’t say from whom. He suggested she call his professors, and she called a couple, who said he was doing fine as far as they knew. Well, NEVER MIND THAT, he wasn’t functioning socially, either.

Eichenwald denied it. “I’m doing lots of things. I founded an a cappella group with my roommate, and we’ve already had a performance. I’m working with the Swarthmore Players Club. I’m already working on the spring musical I’m directing….”

“That’s not true. You just think you are,” Dickerson said. “Kurt, you aren’t doing these things.” Frantically, he waved a tape of the a cappella group’s performance, but they didn’t have a tape player and they weren’t interested in his delusions.

They escorted him off campus.

At home, Eichenwald discovered that both Dr. Naarden and his parents had accepted the idea that he was delusional. “They told me you were going to try to fool me,” said his mother sadly. “I understand you were having some trouble with your thinking,” said Dr. Naarden. Naarden said they’d hold off on the treatment plan until they figured out “whether the Dilantin has been causing your cognitive probems at Swarthmore.”

His father accidentally mentioned the brain tumor incident, shocking Eichenwald. When he asked how long it had been between the brain tumor allegation and the not-functioning allegation, his mother said “…A few weeks.”

Eichenwald said, “Okay, so here’s reality…. They wanted me out. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid of liability. They made up two stories. Everybody knew the first one was bogus but trusted the second one. So now my treatment is on hold even though all of you knew they lied once before.”

His parents got a friend to ask Swarthmore’s president to look into the case. At a meeting, which included Dean Dickerson, McPlotface announced that he had been studying Eichenwald’s EEG and it showed that he did not have epilepsy at all – it showed mental illness!

Swarthmore’s equal opportunity specialist was there. It was the first she’d heard of Eichenwald’s case. She knew about EEGs. She had epilepsy herself. She interrupted McPlotface. “[Schemer], as I’m sure you know, many people with epilepsy have normal EEGs. You can’t say the EEG shows epilepsy doesn’t exist,” she said. “Also, I have no idea how you’re saying the EEG proves Kurt is mentally ill. An EEG can’t show anything like that.” He mumbled. He changed the subject. Afterward, the equal opportunity specialist told the president, “If Kurt sues the school, he will win. And not only that—I’ll testify on his behalf.”

Dean Dickerson still didn’t want Eichenwald back. The Americans with Disabilities Act did not exist yet. But the school was clearly violating the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities. The family got Health and Human Services interested. A law professor said she’d represent him free. The legal threats scared the school into re-admitting him. On condition he not make the story public.

Eichenwald returned to Swarthmore, having missed a semester due to this cruel nonsense. He graduated with academic distinction. Eichenwald went on to be a investigative reporter at the New York Times, and to write 5 books. (This story is taken from his gripping memoir, A Mind Unraveled.) He married and had children.

Years later, he got a call from a Swarthmore student fundraiser. As usual he said he would not donate. She asked why. “Did something happen to you?”

“What could they do now, take away my diploma?,” he thought. So he talked.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry,” said the student.

“Thank you, and I hate to say this, but that doesn’t mean much. The school never apologized. I succeeded in life when they could have destroyed me out of their fears or their stupidity about epilepsy. All of my accomplishments have been despite Swarthmore, not because of it, and until the school acknowledges that what they did was wrong, I want nothing to do with it.”

In a few days, Swarthmore’s vice president for development and alumni relations called. He arranged that he and the school’s current president would fly to Dallas, Eichenwald’s home base, for a face-to-face meeting. The president asked “What can we do to repair your relationship with Swarthmore?”

“I need an apology. I need someone to tell me, officially, that this never should have happened. And I want back the tuition that was stolen from my family.”

Soon a official letter of apology came from the president. Then the alumni relations v.p. invited him to give an address at Swarthmore about his work in journalism. They would pay an honorarium. The amount of the honorarium was exactly what Eichenwald’s family was owed for the lost semester.

“You guys are very, very smart,” laughed Eichenwald. He delivered the address, and contributed the honorarium – plus $20,000 – to Swarthmore.

He probably enjoyed hearing that a few years after he left Swarthmore, a group of students organized to force Schemer McPlotface out for “unprofessional and abusive practices.” Rather than have outside experts judge his conduct, McPlotface resigned.

Later, while writing A Mind Unraveled, Eichenwald spoke to Dean Dickerson, who had long since moved to Princeton, and later retired. “[S]he learned for the first time the full story of the events surrounding my dismissal from Swarthmore. …she reacted with shock.” She sent a letter of apology, which he found touching. “I forgive her and wish her only the best.”

Here’s that 2017 letter:

I have been thinking about you continuously since you wrote… I am incredibly pained and sorry to learn of your traumatic experiences at Swarthmore. Most of your testimony about your interactions with Dr. [McPlotface] and Dr. Warner was completely unknown to me, and that which I thought I knew has been put in a completely different context.

I was aware you had been diagnosed with epilepsy and that you were on medication that needed to be managed appropriately. At that time, my knowledge of epilepsy and the potential for seizures was relatively limited. I found it helpful to have a professional colleague in the administration who had epilepsy who could inform us laypersons about the condition. She coached us on how to respond when she had seizure activity, and she was an effective advocate for students who had epilepsy or related medical conditions. At the very least, as you say, she successfully challenged Dr. [McPlotface] in a meeting [about] you. But I know—now—that was not enough. That was not nearly enough.

The doctor had asserted that you were not managing your medications. I regret that on the night I was called in to deliver the decision to you that you would be required to withdraw until you were medically cleared to return, in accepting the recommendations of our health professionals, I contributed to the trauma that has greatly affected your life. At the time I thought I had no reason to question their judgment….

…I view you as a role model for how to carry on and have an extraordinary life while dealing with a chronic, potentially debilitating condition. As I stated in my last message, I am—perhaps undeservedly—very proud of you.

Kurt, I have tried to be forthright in my response. I’m very, very sorry, and you have my heartfelt apologies.

How good are these apologies? Sadly, we don’t have the text of the president’s official apology. Sounds like it was good, worth at least $20,000. Let’s look at Dean Dickerson’s “touching” apology. In its repeated deference to “health professionals,” it’s dreadfully believable. But Dickerson knew that McPlotface had diagnosed an imaginary brain tumor. She was there when he was exposed as saying Eichenwald’s EEG showed things that EEGs don’t show. To really be forthright, she should have addressed the school’s willingness to obey an obviously unreliable, not to say deranged, “health professional.” She should take responsibility for not looking at evidence about Eichenwald’s academic and social “functioning,” and for accepting hearsay from that megalomaniacal “health professional.”

Still, it meant a lot to Eichenwald. Often, apologies are so desperately needed that when they finally arrive, criticism is beside the point.

Eichenwald made his way through a frightening and dangerous medical condition, repeated medical malpractice, and gaslighting of the worst kind. It makes a lot of sense that he doesn’t want to pick holes in the apologies he’s finally gotten, which do acknowledge the main thing: This never should have happened.

Does an apology erase the past? Of course not. But an apology still has value. A good one can help people who are hurt and angry feel better. That’s not nothing. The word “heal” is wildly overused (often by people who apologize badly, who use the idea of healing as shorthand for “hey, let’s all move on and talk about something other than my behavior!”) but a good apology actually can be restorative: to those hurt, to bystanders, to the person who did wrong, and even to the wider world.

In a grand sense, healing from the revelations of the recent college admissions payoff scandal is impossible.

Anyone who didn’t know how incredibly corrupt college admissions can be, how un-level the playing field is, how many “side doors” there are for those who know how to look for them, how much harder the path to college is for those without money or connections or white steamroller parents…well, they know now. It’s a deeply messed-up system. And for high schoolers with disadvantages of one kind or another — poor kids, kids of color, first-generation students, undocumented students, kids with disabilities — the scandal rubs their faces in something they already knew: that fancy people can work the system and circumvent the system in ways that are utterly beyond their reach. This particular incidence — involving paid-off proctors, fake test-takers, wealthy kids flown to special cheating-friendly test centers, thrilling fake action shots of non-athletic wealthy youth on athletic equipment, and little cut-out rich-kid heads digitally glued onto Olympic athlete bodies — probably showed less privileged kids that the truth is even uglier than they’d thought. There is nothing anyone can say to make this OK. (Particularly since many Americans would prefer to kvetch about affirmative action than acknowledge the huge, unfair weight that legacies, rich people, and athletes have on admissions and college life.)

So I’m not saying we should forgive Felicity Huffman for delivering a good apology last week. I’m saying that her good apology nonetheless has the power to help people feel a bit better. If they choose to. No one is obligated to accept any apology. Apologies for wrongs are morally mandatory; forgiveness is not.

Huffman’s statement:

 I am in full acceptance of my guilt, and with deep regret and shame over what I have done, I accept full responsibility for my actions and will accept the consequences that stem from those actions. I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues and the educational community. I want to apologize to them and, especially, I want to apologize to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly. My daughter knew absolutely nothing about my actions, and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her. This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life. My desire to help my daughter is no excuse to break the law or engage in dishonesty.

Why is this a good apology? It uses the word “apologize” (not “regret”; as we’ve said before here, regret is about your own feelings; apologies are about other people’s feelings), acknowledges and owns the offense, recognizes the harm caused, makes no excuses. A perfect apology involves making amends and offering reparations, but those things don’t belong in this statement and she was wise to keep them out of it. At this moment, we don’t want to hear about her starting a scholarship for poor kids or making a giant donation to an educational foundation; that would seem manipulative and opportunistic and cheesy as all get out. What she should be doing is working like hell behind the scenes to make amends and rebuild trust with her kids (both of them: the one she essentially called stupid and the one she essentially called smart and hard-working and not in need of subterranean parental cheating help) and considering ways down the road to help other students in a quiet, non-self-aggrandizing way, as a form of doing penance.

One of the kids swept up in the scandal also issued a good apology. Jack Buckingham, whose mother Jane Buckingham, to put it baldly, bought him an ACT proctor, gave a statement to the The Hollywood Reporter last month:

I have been advised not to speak on the matter at hand but what I will say is this: I know there are millions of kids out there both wealthy and less fortunate who grind their ass off just to have a shot at the college of their dreams. I am upset that I was unknowingly involved in a large scheme that helps give kids who may not work as hard as others an advantage over those who truly deserve those spots. For that I am sorry though I know my word does not mean much to many people at the moment. While the situation I am going through is not a pleasant one, I take comfort in the fact that this might help finally cut down on money and wealth being such a heavy factor in college admissions. Instead, I hope colleges may prioritize [looking at] an applicants’ character, intellect and other qualities over everything else. It was probably not a smart idea to say anything but I needed to get that off my chest.

This is a kid who, unlike the kids who posed on rowing machines and lied about their athletic affiliations, did not know what his mom was up to. (Many of the kids didn’t. Read the whole indictment.) Buckingham paid $50K for her son, who lived with her in Los Angeles, to take the ACT at a test center in Houston, where a proctor was being bought off. But shortly before the scheduled test, Jack developed tonsillitis and his pediatrician said he shouldn’t fly. Jack wanted to go anyway. His mother was recorded telling William Singer, owner of The Edge College & Career Network, “According to [Jack], he’s like, ‘I really don’t feel that bad.” But Jack was scheduled for surgery, and Jane was worried about him flying against doctor’s orders; Jack also wouldn’t be able to fly for two weeks after the surgery. But Jack wanted to take the test! So Singer and Jane Buckingham conspired to have a ringer take the test for him in Houston, and to give Jack a test that he was told he had permission to take at home. (Why would Jack believe that tonsillitis meant he could take the test at home? Well, no one claimed he was a rocket scientist. And kids who’ve had parents smoothing the way for them their entire lives tend to believe what those parents tell them.)

Regardless of Jack’s intellectual heft, his emotional and empathetic smarts seem good. His statement to the Hollywood Reporter indicates that he gets why the Varsity Blues scheme was morally wrong. He understands fundamental social inequities; he understands his own privilege. He apologizes even though he didn’t actually know he was part of the scheme. It’s a graceful statement; he manages not to throw his mother under the bus even though she deserves it.

Of course, it may not be his statement at all, even though the voice really sounds like that of a teenage boy. At least one family caught up in Operation Varsity Blues has hired a crisis manager, Juda Engelmayer, who works at “distancing the student from the alleged criminal activity of the parent.” Engelmayer works to create a different narrative for the kid (“online reputation management and search engine optimization”), pushing the scandal down in Internet searches on the kid’s name and making sure their hobbies, charitable work, and wholesome photos show up on Instagram and Facebook apart from any mention of the parents’ actions. He charges $15-30K a month. He works for all kinds of rich people getting bad PR — one of his clients is Harvey Weinstein. If Engelmayer wrote Jack Buckingham’s statement, he’s really good at his job. This is demoralizing.

Or maybe Jack Buckingham actually wrote the statement himself! Who knows! Anyway, here is something that is factual and not demoralizing: De-emphasizing testing seems to be the way of the collegiate future. The University of Chicago, Bowdoin, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Bates, Colby, GW, Holy Cross, Clark, the New School, Emerson, Bard, Middlebury, Sarah Lawrence, Lewis & Clark, NYU, Mt. Holyoke, Brandeis, Worcester Polytechnic, Pitzer, Whitman, Franklin & Marshall, Temple, Loyola, Connecticut College, Fairfield, Mills, CalArts, Bennington, and many more are now SAT- and ACT-optional. More schools are joining that list every year. There are still a zillion inequities in education to wrestle with, from pre-K to grad school, but one hopes that soon ultra-wealthy people with non-academically-inclined children will go back to buying buildings and making huge unrestricted Kushner-esque donations as in days of yore. Something they’ve never apologized for.

Belated Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019 good wishes from SorryWatch!

Perhaps you’ve seen the video going around social media (and written about in Saturday’s New York Post  and Daily News) depicting three white female students at Brooklyn’s elite Poly Prep Country Day School wearing blackface, jumping around giggling, and making monkey noises. (SorryWatch sees no need to share the video here. It is what it sounds like.) This is the second example of privileged white teens doing blackface in the news this week — hiya, Covington Catholic! — and it’s only Tuesday.

There’s a good opportunity for apology-pondering here. 

Poly Prep’s Black Student affinity group, Umoja (the name refers to the Swahili word for unity) wrote a letter to the school community, published on Friday in the school newspaper and read aloud at the day’s Martin Luther King Jr. assembly. The apology-related requests made by the Umoja students are not only reasonable, but also a blueprint for how people who’ve done wrong should apologize.

The two letter-writers, both seniors, noted that the video wasn’t an isolated incident, but an indication of a larger problematic climate at Poly. Credence is lent to this notion by one response from Poly Prep leadership: “We do not tolerate racism or prejudice in our school or in our communities. We took immediate action as soon as we learned of a highly offensive video, taken years ago, being circulated on our campus.” (Nope. The incident happened two years ago, not waaaay back in the mists of time, the way the phrase “years ago” makes it sound. The two students who are still at the school were never actually disciplined. So this sure does sound as though racism and prejudice have been tolerated pretty well! Let’s see if bad publicity has any impact. The principal of Poly Prep has promised to meet with Umoja reps tomorrow.)

Please read the students’ letter here. We’ll come back to it.

Turning from Brooklyn westward, it seemed at first as though there might be a meaningful apology for the behavior of Covington Catholic students in Washington DC this weekend. (Just for the taunting of Native activist Nathan Phillips. Not for the blackface. Jeez, SorryWatch is so demanding.) On Sunday the school and diocese apologized in a joint statement to the media and in a pop-up message on the school web site. Which has since been taken down. Both the message and the web site (as of Tuesday). Here’s the statement for posterity (yay, shift-command-4):

Alas, in the wake of right-wing responses to the boys’ actions (they were PROVOKED by a loud and unpleasant member of a DIFFERENT minority group! they were only attempting to defuse tensions! they are victims! THE LIBERAL RUSH TO JUDGMENT!), the school issued a new statement to parents, this one without that unpleasant word “expulsion”:

The incident that took place at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. is being fully investigated by an independent third-party investigator. Based upon and following an investigation, we will be taking the appropriate action regarding this matter.

The statement goes on to ask that families report any threats to the police, and concludes, “Please continue to pray for our community.” School was closed today, what with people being desirous of screaming at the students and faculty. (Here’s a thought. Not to engage in “what-about-ism” and/or “both-sides-ism” or anything, but how about we all refrain from screaming and threatening?)

The boys insist that they did nothing wrong. The diocese issued another statement today: “This is a very serious matter that has already permanently altered the lives of many people,” it said. “It is important for us to gather the facts that will allow us to determine what corrective actions, if any, are appropriate.”

Here’s another thought, issued with not a ton of hopefulness: Both the Covington adults and the Poly Prep adults would do well to ponder the demands of the Poly Prep Umoja members. They are “only kids,” but their list shows that they understand what constitutes a meaningful apology. Here’s what they asked for:

— For the administration, faculty, and student body to view the situation as what it is: the most recent in a series of racist and intolerable acts that have alienated a large portion of Poly’s community rather than as an isolated event.

— For a public apology from the girls who participated in the video and the making thereof.

— For acknowledgment that the school has not taken steps to protect students of color in this latest episode

— For an email sent out to parents, students, and alumni clearly addressing the content of the video (specifying that it was blackface) as well as what steps are being taken to ensure that incidents like this do not happen again.

— For the implementation of a required civics/ethics/empathy course(s).

— For more faculty of color to help and support us.

— For a new section of the Poly Code of Conduct which specifically addresses hateful actions and hateful speech, whether it takes place on or off campus.

— For a greater emphasis and employment of our zero-tolerance policy.

— For equal repercussions for all students that violate policy and no statute of limitations for those violations.

Why is this list good? It ticks all of SorryWatch’s good-apology boxes: The words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize”; a statement of exactly what the apology is for (not “the incident” or “what was depicted in a video shared on social media”); an acknowledgment of the harm done; reparations; and a list of concrete steps that will be taken to ensure that similar problems won’t recur.

Fingers crossed — but not a lot of optimism felt — for teachable moments in Brooklyn, and in DC, and in Kentucky.

One half of Team SorryWatch is now off in the desert, perhaps with no pants on, perhaps not. (This was a reference to one of our most popular posts, in which Sumac reported about a camp at Burning Man that specialized in helping people apologize. It’s a great post; read it if you haven’t.) The tragic, left-behind non-Burner therefore decided to take her mind off her loneliness by compiling a roundup of recent apology research.

Let’s begin with the work of Oberlin psychology professor Cindy Frantz. Prompted by a student, she ran studies determining that yes, there is such a thing as a “too-early apology.” A precipitous apology “can make the victim feel like the perpetrator did not take the time to understand their perspective and therefore doesn’t understand what they did wrong.” So rather than leaping into the discomfort/reaction-to-criticism breach, take some time to ponder why the other person is so hurt or angry. Educate yourself, ask questions, listen, and then apologize once you’ve truly understood the impact of your actions. Celebrities and politicians often screw this up. “For an apology to be effective, the perpetrator has to understand the victim’s worldview and experience,” Frantz told Williams Magazine. “That’s where my work on too-early apologies informs my understanding of public apologies—the central theme here is the perpetrator’s ability (or inability) to take the victim’s perspective.” (How long is optimal to wait before apologizing? ALAS. More research is needed.)

Moving on, here’s an interesting look at the impact of apologies in social rejections. It was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology by researchers at Dartmouth and UT Austin. Let’s say you’ve just turned down a request to go out for drinks, or told a colleague you’d prefer not to work on a project together. Should you apologize? Surprisingly, probably not. Lead author Gili Freedman and her colleagues note that “apologies may backfire within a social rejection because they may make targets feel compelled to express forgiveness without actually making targets feel forgiveness and may make the target feel the rejector is not sincere.” In other words, when you apologize, the other person feels pressure to say “that’s okay”…even if IT IS NOT. “Social norms dictate that we forgive someone if they apologize,” Freedman et al write. “Therefore, targets are put in a position where they are expected to forgive the rejection even if they do not believe the apology is sincere.”

You should probably read this paper because it includes the phrase “participants allocated more hot sauce” (metaphorical hot sauce! to be theoretically ingested, punitively, by the person who socially rejected the participant in an experiment!) and “A Hurt Feelings score was computed.” Snarly is personally computing her Hurt Feelings score at all times. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Another fun finding in this study: Social rejections with apologies were felt to be less sincere than social rejections without apologies. And perhaps ironically, the rejector becomes LESS likely to actually be forgiven than if they hadn’t apologized at all.

The study also notes that sometimes people who apologize aren’t interested in real forgiveness. Sometimes they just want to feel better themselves (“I said I was sorry, whew, all good!”), and sometimes, in Freedman and company’s words, they “may just want the quickest solution (i.e., the most efficient form of rejection).” The authors also note, dovetailing with Frantz’s research, that more time between the social rejection and the reaction might change the outcomes.

Finally, there’s the question of wording. Does it matter if you apologize first, then give the social rejection, or if you give the social rejection, and then apologize for it? We need MOAR RESEARCH! But there are hints! Researchers in the business realm have found that when you’re writing a “nope” letter to a job applicant, it’s better to put the rejection right up front, so that the applicant immediately knows what’s what. “Previously, letter writers were cautioned to begin with a positive statement (i.e., a buffer), but research on buffers found that rejected applicants were more upset because they were then surprised by the rejection after reading something positive.” Thus: We regret to inform you that you suck.

More research on apologies and power (does being powerful make your apology more or less likely to be accepted?) in another post.

PS. Snarly truthfully did not want to go to Burning Man. It has dirt. She makes no apologies.

It’s a good apology! Hallelujah!

The current (Aug/Sept) print issue of BUST features an article called “Shoplifters of the World.” It turns out to have been lifted (see what I did there) from a 2016 article in Good. (FULL DISCLOSURE! Snarly has written for BUST. MORE FULL DISCLOSURE! SorryWatch learned about this incident through a reader pointing us to Jezebel’s comprehensive reporting on it. ATTRIBUTION, BUBBELEHS.)

A sophomore at the University of Chicago pitched a piece to BUST on young women who steal stuff from big stores and frame their actions in anti-capitalist, activist language. Interesting! Bust assigned her the piece. After it was published, though, a friend of writer Tasbeeh Herwees noticed its similarity to Herwees’s Good article. So much similarity! Read the Jezebel article to see how much.

And then!

BUST apologized very, very well!

Go read. Now, why this such a good apology? Let’s review:

1. It uses the words “sorry” and “apologize” — not the pallid and non-ownership-taking “regret.”
2. It states precisely what the apology is for. It does not make vague, hand-wavey pronouncements.
3. It takes responsibility. It does not throw the plagiarist under the bus, but rather addresses the magazine’s lack of diligence in allowing plagiarized material to be published.  (In fact, BUST does not even name the plagiarist. It would have been ok to name her, but not to have made it ALL HER FAULT. She screwed up, but not in a vacuum.)
4. It tries to make amends. BUST apologizes to the writer of the Good piece publicly, and the statement notes that the editor-in-chief also apologized privately. And BUST offered the writer of the Good piece the fee she would have received had she written the piece for BUST.
5. It explains the steps being taken to ensure that this doesn’t happen again: BUST will implement more diligent fact-checking procedures and vet prospective writers more carefully.

Well done.

The young writer, alas, has not apologized. When Jezebel reached out to her for comment, she emailed back:

The “plagiarism accusations” arose out of a failure to cite the source of some quotations properly within the story. As soon as I realized that the quotations weren’t credited properly, I reached out to the author of the piece I quoted. We’ve already discussed how we can fix the issue and she was very understanding about the mistakes.

This was the first article I’ve ever written for a print publication. I didn’t know the proper protocol for citation in this type of writing, and as a result, I failed to credit Tasbeeh properly, which I now regret terribly and am trying to fix.

“Plagiarism accusations” should not be in quotes. Failing to cite sources properly is plagiarism. It doesn’t matter if the actual author is understanding; it is still plagiarism. This takes no responsibility whatsoever. It also minimizes the offense: The idea, the sources, and the quotes all came from the Good piece; the author also paraphrased some of the Good writer’s own phrasing.

All this said, the writer is young. High schools and colleges (even good ones, like the University of Chicago!) are not always great at teaching kids what plagiarism is. We could choose to give her the benefit of the doubt and hope this becomes a teachable moment for lots of young folks.

Young folks: Here’s the University of Chicago’s page on plagiarism in the student handbook. There are some great resources, including a book published by the University of Chicago Press called Doing Honest Work in College: How to Prepare Citations, Avoid Plagiarism, and Achieve Real Academic Success. There’s also a link to the Purdue Writing Lab — it is broken, U Chicago pals! Fix it! Here is what I think you wanted to point to, because it is excellent and chattily written and offers really helpful suggestions about notetaking, managing drafts, using best practices when it comes to quotations and others’ ideas, and much more.

I am pretty confident that in my mediocre public high school, no one extensively explained plagiarism to me. And this was back in the olden days when there was no World Wide Web, which meant the odds of getting caught were way smaller. I am also pretty sure that no professor ever talked to me about plagiarism in college — not even my expository writing teacher, who admittedly looked like he’d rather be oh, ANYWHERE ELSE. And yet I did not plagiarize. So I feel many things here: Sympathy for the young writer, impatience with the young writer, annoyance at a system that does not make abundantly clear what plagiarism is, and also rue for my professor friends who have told me that they aren’t allowed to fail anybody even for egregious plagiarism. But hey, I AM HAPPY FOR BUST’S GOOD APOLOGY!

And this must suffice.

A university sent letters of admissions to more kids than it actually wanted to admit, calculating that a lot of them wouldn’t come. This happens all the time.

If a school gets too many students, it may scramble to shoehorn in the extras. Dorm rooms that were formerly doubles become triples, don’t ask us how we know. More teaching assistants are hired.

Or it may decide, as U.C. Irvine recently did, faced with 500 more new students than it had planned on, to get mean and come up with excuses to disinvite many of those students it had just sent welcoming letters to.

UCI did this two months before the start of school, when kids it had accepted had already started making plans and had turned down other schools and offers of financial aid.

“You didn’t send all your final transcripts, so you can’t come.” “Yeah, you sent your transcripts, but not soon enough. Don’t bother showing up.” “We didn’t like your history grade last semester, so we changed our minds.”

For the most part the reasons given in the fuck-off-and-die letters were “either minor or bogus — or… no reason at all,” as the L.A. Times wrote. A campus spokesman admitted that they were being more exacting than usual because of their unanticipated popularity. The Times profiled Ashley Gonzalez, an 18-year-old who’d expected to be the first in her family to go to college, and who was disinvited on the grounds that UCI hadn’t received one of two transcripts. Gonzalez and her mother say both transcripts were mailed in the same envelope.

The Times interviewed another student who didn’t give his full name in case it jeopardized his appeal – straight out of four years in the Marine Corps and planning a neurobiology major, the 22-year-old had his admission revoked, and was told it was because he’d violated a freshman admission requirement. Which one? They wouldn’t say. When he’d gotten the first letter welcoming him to UCI, he’d turned down two other U.C. campuses, one of which had offered him a $30,000 scholarship.

There was an uproar, in traditional and social media. Disinvited applicants were shocked and outraged/despairing. Parents were furious in defense of their cubs. Current students and alumni rose up in protest. (“We are so sorry that UCI admin has decided to ruin students lives…”)

Then came this message, from Vice Chancellor Thomas A. Parham:

Dear Prospective Anteater:

You recently received a letter from our admissions team regarding your status at the University of California, Irvine. I understand that the notification may have been disappointing and frightening, so I wanted to take a moment to explain our decision-making process, help you respond, and acknowledge our missteps.

This year, UCI experienced unprecedented demand from students eager to join the Anteater family. We received more than 104,000 applications – more than all but two colleges nationwide – and the number of students intending to register for fall classes was higher than to be expected. You are to be once again congratulated for your acceptance into one of the world’s premier universities.

Acceptance into all University of California campuses is provisional, contingent on meeting the contractual terms and conditions that were clearly outlined in your original admissions offer. This includes submitting all academic materials such as transcripts and test scores by the agreed-upon deadline, upholding strong academic performance throughout the senior year of high school that meets agreed upon thresholds, and having no discrepancies between the grades and courses you reported on your application and what we see once we review your official final transcript.

Every year, we notify students who are not in compliance with these terms and conditions. And, every year, there are students who did not comply for legitimate reasons. In some cases, the actions which result in an offer being rescinded occur through no fault of the student…. For those cases, we have an appeal process outlined on our website… If you believe that you received a withdrawal notification in error, or you have legitimate reasons for not complying with the acceptance agreement, I urge you to appeal. For those of you who already submitted an appeal, we are reviewing them as quickly as possible and we thank you for your patience as we work through the files we are reviewing.

We heard from some students that this year’s process was too stringent and our customer-service approach needs improvement. I acknowledge that we took a harder line on the terms and conditions this year and we could have managed that process with greater care, sensitivity, and clarity about available options. Also contributing to the angst many of you have experienced is our traditional communication and outdated telephone systems that did not serve us well in this circumstance. For those who felt ignored or mistreated, I sincerely apologize.

We are making every effort to do better, immediately. I have directed the admissions team to step up the personal outreach to notified students. We’re bringing in more people to review appeals and answer phones. We are committed to correcting any errors swiftly and providing the help you need in an empathetic and understanding way.

In closing, there is one point that I want to make clear: All accepted students who meet the terms and conditions of the admissions offer will be welcomed into the Anteater Family. No acceptance will be withdrawn due to over-enrollment, despite external reports to the contrary.

We are dedicated to providing outstanding educational opportunities to as many qualified students as possible, and strive to ensure Anteaters have a successful and positive experience on campus and in the classroom.

By now you will have noticed that students at UCI are called Anteaters. This is a charming choice, in part derived from an anteater character in the comic strip B.C., also the source of the exclamation of “Zot!” that survives at UCI.

But addressing students worried they’ve just lost out on college as “Prospective Anteater” and chortling about the “Anteater family” is adding insult to injury. So is congratulating them on having been accepted when they’ve now been rejected.

Which fits, because it’s a bad apology. Long and condescending, it’s full of nothing-to-see-here, this-is-what-we-always-do language. Not until the fifth paragraph does Parham concede any fault, and then he quickly blames the phone system. “For those who felt ignored or mistreated, I sincerely apologize” is a bureaucratic way to express a vile sorry-if. It’s all about those FEELINGS, not about anyone actually being ignored or mistreated.

The following two paragraphs are some improvement, especially the promise that no one will be turned away because of over-enrollment. But by this time, prospective Anteaters are liable to feel… untrusting.

Vice Chancellor Parham’s letter didn’t put out the fire. The following week Chancellor Howard Gillman spoke up.

The stories of our students whose college dreams were crushed by our decision to withdraw admissions to hundreds of students are heartbreaking. And unacceptable.

…We are a university recognized for advancing the American dream, not impeding it. This situation is rocking us to our core because it is fundamentally misaligned with our values.

I must step in and change our direction. Effective immediately, all students who received provisional acceptances into UCI will be fully admitted, except those whose transcripts clearly indicate that they did not meet our academic standards. Those standards are: no D’s or F’s their senior year; a senior-year grade point average of at least 3.0; completion of all A-G requirements outlined by the University of California; and required test scores as indicated on the students’ admission portals.

Then I got mad. (Southern Tamandua, Tamandua tetradactyla.)

Even for students whose transcripts show that these requirements were not met, we will establish an expedited process to allow students to make the case for extenuating circumstances, and otherwise will work with students to identify other possible pathways into the university.

We’re trying to understand how we underestimated the number of students who planned to enroll this fall. We’re also trying to understand why we chose to notify students in an insensitive way or couldn’t answer their telephone calls adequately. I intend to find out so this will never happen again. I directed our internal auditor to review the admissions process and suggest areas for improvement. I plan to have a preliminary report within 60 days.

In closing, the students and their families have my personal, sincerest apology. We should not have treated you this way over a missed deadline.

They said my admission was revoked because I hadn’t documented that I eat ants. But I submitted a video of me eating ants, and they said the format was wrong! I paid my deposit in ants! I requested the all-ants meal plan!

We will welcome all of our wonderful students who worked so hard to satisfy the requirements for UCI admission, and as we move forward we will do everything we can to earn the trust and loyalty of our community.

Much better. Still annoying. Gillman will “step in” and come to the rescue! (Where were you before, Chancellor?) It’s good he omitted the rah-rah about the Anteater family.

Hundreds of the accepted-then-rejected students have already been re-accepted. We hope Gonzalez and the Marine are among them.

(Thank you to Kali I., and to Daniel S., for alerting SorryWatch to this story.)

Harland Fletcher recently finished his senior year at Liberty High School in Brentwood, California. He sounds like an energetic and motivated guy. The day he turned 17, he enlisted in the US Army. Under the Split Training Option, he completed Basic Combat Training during the summer between his junior and senior years, becoming a medic in the Army Reserve.

Justifiably proud, he wanted to wear his uniform at graduation. He asked his counselor about it several times, and was told it was fine.

But high schools, you know? Sometimes they aspire to be as authoritarian as the Army, but making it up as they go along.

When Fletcher showed up for graduation, he was told he could not wear the uniform. By several vice-principals and the principal, Patrick Walsh. He pointed out that California law allows him to do so. His protests were not taken seriously. Finally, he was offered a cap and gown to wear over the uniform. Fletcher pointed out that to do so violate the military uniform code. Theoretically he could be court-martialled for taking their stupid suggestion.

They didn’t care. So he left. He didn’t get to take part in his graduation. They said he could pick up his diploma in the office next week.

His parents, who had come to watch him walk, were shocked and hurt. His father, a veteran, posted on Facebook, describing the incident and the applicable law, asking that people spread the word. He said they were devastated. He drew political conclusions. “I understand the disdain those of us in uniform have received from many educators- they just don’t care to support military service- yes, they understand they can’t bash it like they did in the late 60’s, insulting servicemembers, but they get sucker punches in, like this…. I am tired of service members and vets being quietly and systematically denied rights by establishments that should know, respect and abide by the laws enacted on all of our behalfs.”

Later that day, the district superintendent posted this apology:

Dear Liberty Community,

After reading AB 1463; 2009 STAT. Chapter 296 It has become clear that Harland Fletcher may have the right to wear his US Army Dress Uniform at his graduation and on behalf of the Liberty Union High School District I publically apologize to him and his family for this Incident.

No slight was meant to Harland nor to the US Army. In fact with a little prior notification, I’m sure that Principal Walsh and the site administration would have come to this conclusion before the ceremony. Principal Walsh and the District do support the armed forces as exemplified by his recognition of graduating seniors that have chosen the military for their post-graduate plans during the graduation ceremony.

Again I apologize to Harland for this unfortunate incident, and thank him for his service to our country.

Eric Volta

Bad apology. Fletcher “may” have the right to wear his uniform? No “may” about it, he does. Volta tries to cast blame on the student – if only there had been “prior notification,” this could have been avoided! Nobody honors the military like we do! Also, “publically” apologizing is fine, but there should be a personal apology to Fletcher and his family, and maybe an invitation to be a special guest at the next graduation. As we’ll see, this legalistic, third-person, just-plain-bad apology didn’t help matters at all.

Unlike the senior Mr. Fletcher, I doubt that this incident was the result of anti-military sentiment. I think it was just routine authoritarian bullpuckey on the part of school administrators. ‘You want to wear your uniform? Too bad, we decided on a school colors theme. Oh, you asked your counselor? Well, you didn’t ask me. You don’t want to risk a court-martial? Spare me the drama, this is my busy day.’

I suspect free-floating disdain, not disdain aimed at the military. But whichever it was, they handled it illegally, disrespectfully, and unkindly all the way down the line.

That includes the lousy apology. As Harland Fletcher told a CBS affiliate, “You can apologize all you want, but in the moment you should have already known.”

And if you didn‘t know, you should have taken the high road, which is about showing pride in accomplished students.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

Principal Walsh apologized in person (good!) to the Fletcher family, and arranged a private graduation ceremony on Monday. A “a group of veterans, military families and well-wishers” were in attendance. In addition to the diploma, Fletcher was given an award (from the VFW) and a certificate (from a district supervisor). His father’s quotes no longer suggest much grievance. “You take what you can get. As you serve, you miss these things. It’s a small sacrifice, but we know he is okay with it.”

Principal Walsh said “I made a mistake last Friday night, and I don’t mince words. I deeply regret what occurred.”

Oh dear. “I made a mistake” is good! Takes responsibility. “I don’t mince words” is bad. What is that boast doing here? “…regret what occurred” is terrible. Passive voice, Principal Walsh! Where’s that responsibility now?

(Thanks very much to Mary M. for pointing out this follow-up story.)

This past Sunday’s New York Times has a shudder-inducing story about a teacher at Phillips Academy who inappropriately romanced one of his students.

Later, the teacher, Frederic Lyman, moved to Choate Rosemary Hall, where he was one of 12 former teachers found by investigators to have sexually abused young women. Lyman reportedly had sex with two teenagers in his car, gave them rum-spiked tea, gave at least one of them herpes, and stalked one of the girls and gave her a black eye.

One of Lyman’s former students at Phillips Academy, Jane Marion, gave the NYT five letters Lyman sent her after he was her summer session English teacher after her sophomore year. In the letters, he flatters, romances, and threatens her. You can read them at the Times, preferably while dousing yourself in Lysol.

Given the opportunity to respond, Lyman said in a statement:

In re-reading these letters nearly 40 years after writing them, I see the ramblings of a lovesick young man who was 27 years old at the time. However, my lapse in judgment was inexcusable. I breached the trust and overstepped the boundaries between student and teacher. Due to my own immaturity, I considered my students to be peers and friends, which was a mistake that I will regret for the rest of my life. I am deeply sorry for any pain or discomfort my actions may have caused.

Let’s enumerate the ways in which this is a lousy apology.

1. “nearly 40 years” — water under the bridge, my friends!
2. “ramblings” — idle meanderings! Signifying nothing!
3. “lovesick young man” — he was in love with her! and young! he and the young woman were peers! and he was sick! in a romantic way! like a poet! with a sickness that is not his fault, because sick!
4. “who was 27 years old at the time” — a tiny baby, a mere Lochte, a kid, unaccountable for his kiddish actions.
5. “However” — a word that does not belong in apologies. Like “obviously,” it should be banished from everyone’s apology vocabulary.
6. “immaturity” — he knew not what he do.
7. “peers and friends” — peers, because he was so young, remember? also, consider the connotations of “friend”: Warm, close, wholesome as a muffin.
8. “a mistake that I will regret for the rest of my life” — oh, Fred. Regret is not enough. Especially without responsibility, which you do not show the taking of. Besides, as we’ve noted, “regret” is about self, while “sorry” is about others.
9. “sorry for any pain or discomfort my actions may have caused” — “MAY”? There is no “may”; there is only DID. “Discomfort” is a minimizing word. A paper cut causes discomfort. Using the word “haunted” and developing depression and an eating disorder does not sound like “discomfort.” Also, what is “my actions”? Say what you did. The romance, the guilting of your victim, the threats. Maybe mention the repeated calls at 1am? Just a thought.

Vile. Just vile.

Inside Higher Education has an excellent account of a horrible decision made by an academic journal…and the journal’s attempt to make things right. Read the whole tale there.

The (sorta?) short version:

Last year, an assistant professor at Columbia’s Teachers College named Ansley T. Erickson published a well-regarded book about educational inequities in Nashville. Reviews and education experts called the book, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits, “impressive,” “a comprehensive history,” “meticulous and inspired,” a “rare balance of deep archival engagement and immediate contemporary relevance,” and “powerful and useful.” But American Historical Review assigned to review it a retired professor, Raymond Wolters, with widely discredited views on race. Some of those views: Postwar American academics’ desires to distance themselves from the Nazis made them overcompensate in their refusal to acknowledge biological racial differences. Today, Wolters believes, political correctness causes many scholars to continue to be dismissive of actual science. A sample from this essay (called “Why Have We Unlearned What We Knew in 1900?” published on a site called American Renaissance, which focuses on what it calls “race realism” and which flatly states as one of its grounding philosophical issues that “One of the most destructive myths of modern times is that people of all races have the same average intelligence”):

Culturism also gave rise to a new form of intolerance. In some colleges there have been efforts to silence those who give Darwinian or biological explanations for race and sex differences in achievement. Meanwhile, many colleges and school districts pay the expenses of students and teachers who attend conferences where leftist fanatics maintain that persistent racial and ethnic disparities are the result of “white privilege.” Culturists have also silenced candid discussion of other topics, especially feminism, homosexuality, trans-genderism, and gay marriage. We have moved beyond the days when the exceptions to free speech were limited to incitement, sedition, pornography, and blasphemy.

Shockingly, Wolters — alone among reviewers — took issue with Erickson’s book! (I haven’t actually done the data-crunching on this, but I am GUESSING he is also the only reviewer who has also written for nattily-coiffed, punchable-faced neo-Nazi Richard Spencer’s web site! Nope, not linking, sorry! But it’s true!)

Wolters noted in his American Historical Review essay that Erickson had failed to address
“sociobiology,” which is often defined as the notion that social behavior comes from evolution. In practice, “sociobiology” is often shorthand for “racist fuckery.” In usage: “Sociobiology” means that if black people are downtrodden because they are dumb and uncivilized, hey, THAT’S JUST SCIENCE.

Wolters, like Erickson, has written about school desegregation. So they have that in common! But unlike Erickson, Wolters concluded that desegregation failed because of “the ignorance and uncivilized behavior of many blacks.” AGAIN, THAT’S JUST SCIENCE.

Many academics were horrified that AHR assigned a review to a person with such beliefs. One of numerous letters of protest to AHR, this one by Professor Zoe Burkholder at Montclair State, noted that it was “inappropriate and unfair that you selected a white supremacist who believes in black racial inferiority to review a civil rights history book.”

Some professors were not surprised.

How did the AHR debacle happen? From 1910-1980, it published *2* pieces by black scholars. Our profession is American. It’s built on racism.

— Brandon Byrd (@bronaldbyrd) April 18, 2017

The journal’s interim editor, Robert A. Schneider, published an apology:

The AHR deeply regrets both the choice of the reviewer and aspects of the review itself. As for the choice of the reviewer, I have reviewed the process by which he was placed on our ‘pick list’ of potential reviewers, and I have been reassured that we were not aware of his publicly aired and published views when he was selected. His university webpage reveals him to be a legitimate scholar with a fairly long and solid publication record; our database also confirmed his status as an academic who has published in credible scholarly venues. It is absolutely true, of course, that a little more digging would have turned up evidence that would have — and has — discredited him as a legitimate scholar.

Regrettably, we did not dig further. Worse yet, we did not investigate his views even when his review was flagged for my perusal. This is entirely on me. I recall lingering over that last sentence where he mentions sociobiology, wondering whether it was appropriate. In retrospect I should have lingered longer. As well, this sentence should have prompted me to look into his recent publications, which would certainly have convinced me to pull the review. Alas, I did neither, for which I owe both Professor Erickson and our readers an apology. We will be commissioning another review of her book.

This apology is good, not great. The good: Schneider put his apology after the letters taking him to task, which makes clear precisely what he did wrong. He does not obfuscate. He apologizes to all AHR’s readers, not just to the book’s author. He promises to publish another review. He promises to revisit the journal’s commission guidelines. He takes responsibility (“This is entirely on me”) and even points out that the review was flagged (though not by whom) — someone on his staff was troubled enough to say, “Dude, look at this.”

The not-great: The long sentence about Wolters being a legitimate scholar. All you had to do was Google to see that the man has written for heinous web sites and believes in scientifically biased and hateful ideas. The “I have been assured” we had no clue about his “publicly aired and published views” observation is like an illustrious journal of cosmetology protesting that it had NO IDEA Bugs Bunny did not have an actual degree from an accredited salon program when it let him give an INNNNNTERSTING MONSTER AN INNNNNTERESTING hairdo.

An excellent apology would have skipped the feeble self-justifying and gone straight to the second graf, which starts, “Regrettably, we did not dig further.”

Incidentally, Insider Higher Ed might want to take a little look in the mirror too. What’s up with the phrasing, “a professor who has been criticized by many as a white supremacist”? No, he is a white supremacist. Your own tortured use of the passive voice should be telling you that you have written a problematic sentence.

But hey, let’s end on a positive note. AHR will not be deleting the review. Schneider told Insider Higher Ed:

We did indeed consider retraction as an option but, in consultation with the [American Historical Association, which sponsors the journal] and Oxford University Press, we decided not to go this route. There were several considerations, but one in particular speaks to a fundamental principle: in a sense, it would be ‘convenient’ for us to retract this clearly egregious review — everyone would like to go back and eliminate their mistakes. However, this would not only be self-serving, it would also amount to effacing evidence — something historians especially are loath to do — of an error.

Erickson was cool with this. As she told Inside Higher Ed:

I appreciate the apology and the plans for a new review. A retraction would be largely symbolic. The original text would continue to circulate in print and digitally. And as it does, it serves as a useful reminder of the AHR‘s participation in this problem. I care more about the actions that come next. For the AHR and other scholarly journals who have published false assertions of ‘sociobiology,’ this episode is a clear prompt to scrutinize their book-review processes (and their broader editorial and peer-review processes). They must identify and work to change the mechanisms — including the underrepresentation of people of color in the profession — that produce spaces where racism can be moved along through the pipeline rather than be recognized and interrupted.

We at SorryWatch have noted many times that deleting vile articles post-apology is bad form. (The exception is when leaving the article online could cause someone greater harm, as with the Daily Beast’s coy clue-dropping about the identities of closeted Olympic athletes entrapped by a dickweasel of a sniggering journalist. In that case, it was proper for the original piece to be taken down. Conveniently, since The Daily Beast’s numerous terrible apologies were so self-aggrandizing, non-specific and all-around crappy, we lose the truth of the full horror they actually committed. Deletion works in their favor. Oh well.) In general, we feel it is important to leave a historical record of a screw-up. We applaud AHR for leaving up the review by Professor Atrocious.

Our pal Ivan Oransky, MD at Retraction Watch agrees. In an email interview, he told SorryWatch:

Retraction is, as many have said, the nuclear option when it comes to correction. It should be used sparingly, if at all. The Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidelines only recommend retraction when a paper demonstrates “clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error); the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication); it constitutes plagiarism; it reports unethical research.”

“Poorly thought out work that should never have been commissioned or published” isn’t anywhere on the list. Neither is “I really, really don’t like that paper.” We’ve seen this before, in the case of a paper about the alleged effects of genetically modified food on rats. In that case, the editor of the journal cited COPE guidelines in retracting the paper — but as we noted, the retraction really wasn’t justified. That doesn’t mean, however, that an editor should just shrug and move on. If an editor has grave concerns, they can add a note — or something formal, like an Expression of Concern (oh, the capitals!) — so that readers have the full picture.

And that’s what AHR seems to be doing. Good. But. It is devoutly to be wished that all academic journals and institutions use this opportunity to examine their own unexamined biases in choosing reviewers and failing to see problematic content before it is published.