Security Studies Backlash—A Feminist Response

[Jumoke, Ola]

Security Studies Backlash – A Feminist Response

We are writing to condemn the orchestrated assault against two anti-racist feminist scholars in our field by senior male scholars.

The senior scholars faced a critique of their work which appeared in a peer-reviewed journal publication and they were permitted the standard form of scholarly rejoinder. But finding that insufficient - and using now commonplace tactics deployed to silence women, persons of colour, queers, feminists, anti- racist scholars and other critical voices - they simultaneously worked to mobilize supporters, sent an email to hundreds of recipients, posted a ninety-eight page supplemental response, and engaged in a traditional and social media campaign against their critics as well as the journal and its editorial leadership.

This has galvanized a backlash, which is aimed at controlling who can speak and what can be spoken. Its effect is a politics of intimidation that silences the work of critical race and decolonial scholars. Early feminist and other critical work in IR faced similar reactions, though in an era that pre-dated the social media platforms that amplify these types of attacks today. The content of these attacks, however, is the same: they dismiss alternative voices and forms of critique for their lack of rigour or as poorly-executed scholarship, and in this way evade accountability or authentic engagement, except on terms dictated by those who have been critiqued.

This was a missed opportunity in which the insights of critical race theory could have been carefully engaged and forms of solidarity further developed. The public spectacle of these silencing techniques has not only harmed the immediate targets, it ensures a much wider audience is now being schooled in how to ‘responsibly’ engage with questions of race and racism.

We want to make absolutely clear that we are horrified by these tactics and by this assault. We view what is happening here as a form of violence, mobilized by scholars who ostensibly abhor violence but who are now responsible for the toxic and dangerous environment of harassment and intimidation their actions have produced.

This moment is a learning opportunity to engage respectfully in conversation with one another. No scholarship is innocent of the dynamics of structural racism and coloniality in which we are all embedded and thus all must work to be accountable for and to address this.

But there is no possibility of learning and moving forward when responses are reduced to silencing as a form of violence.

Cynthia Enloe

V. Spike Peterson 

Jindy Pettman

Anne Sisson Runyan 

Sandra Whitworth

 Marysia Zalewski

Signatories as of 8 pm EST May 21 2020

Ali Bilgic

Amanda Álvares Ferreira 

Amy Lind

Andrea García González

 Anitta Kynsilehto

Anna M. Agathangelou Anna Powles

Annick Wibben

Anwar Mhajne (Mahajna) 

Beth Greener

Biljana Ginova

Biljana Kotevska

Bina D’Costa

Caron Gentry

Catherine Eschle 

Catherine Goetze

Catia C. Confortini 

Colleen Bell

Cristina Masters

Daniel Conway

David Duriesmith

Denise Horn

Dženeta Karabegović 

Elaine Mei 

Lien Pratley 

Elena B. Stavrevska

Elina Penttinen

Elisa Wynne-Hughes 

Elisabeth Prügl

Erin Baines

Georgina Holmes

Hanna Ketola

Heidi Riley

J. Ann Tickner

J. Marshall Beier

Jane Parpart

Khushi Singh Rathore 

Kiran Grewal

Laura Parisi

Laura Sjoberg

Linda Åhäll

Mandi Donahoe

Maria Martin de Almagro 

Maria O'Reilly

Marianne H. Marchand

 Marjaana Jauhola 

Marsha Henry

Mary Hawkesworth

Mary Meyer

Maureen Fordham 

Melissa T. Brown

Nadine Ansorg

Natalie F. Hudson 

Nicola Pratt

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso 

Peace A. Medie

Peter Nyers

Punam Yadav

Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel 

Rosalba Icaza Garza 

Saara Särmä

Sam Cook

Sarai Aharoni

Shampa Biswas

Shine Choi

Shirin Saeidi

Shweta Singh

Simona Sharoni

Sladjana Lazic

Sungju Park-Kang

Susan T Jackson

Susanne Zwingel 

Suzanne Bergeron

Swati Parashar

Synne Dyvik

Theresa de Langis 

Thomas Gregory

Tiina Vaittinen

Toni Haastrup

Victoria Basham

Vjosa Musliu

Yeshi Choedon

--

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, PhD.,
Department of Political Science and Public Administration,
PMB 4010,
Babcock University,
Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria. 
.....
Aut optima, aut nihil (Either the best or nothing)

Intelligence Plus Character -- that is the goal of True Education - Martin Luther King, Jr.