In the hallowed halls of Oxford University, the selection of the new Professor of Poetry-a 300-year-old honor unmatched in the field-has become a tumultuous, controversy-fraught disaster that has prevented a highly acclaimed poet from winning the job.
The instigator? An anonymous letter-writing campaign intended to dismantle the candidacy of the one-time frontrunner, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, by digging up past allegations of sexual misconduct.
The conspirators in the anti-Walcott effort sent dozens of Oxford academics excerpts from the book "The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus," by Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner in order to make a case against him. After the evidence surfaced, the smeared Walcott dropped out of the race, allowing Ruth Padel to be elected to the post, as the first woman in the position's history.
And the carnage continued: a newspaper found recently that, contrary to previous statements, Padel had indeed sent e-mails alerting journalists of Walcott's alleged instances of sexual harassment. The Sunday Times reports that in April, Padel informed at least two journalists of the past accusations. Once Padel admitted to the claims, she decided to resign the post.
I have had the great pleasure of encountering the genius of Walcott's poetry in and out of the classroom, and it is a shame that the fracas made over these allegations is depriving Oxford students of a world-class artist and academic. The quick dismantling of the search for a new Professor of Poetry is an example of how the politics of choosing candidates for academic positions can become too steeped in moralizing conduct, allowing their qualifications to take a back seat. As a result of an unfortunate display of mudslinging, Oxford students are now being deprived of the chance to learn from a master poet.
Until now, the kind of misconduct cited in "The Lecherous Professor" has not impeded Walcott from teaching at Columbia, Yale and Boston University among other institutions. The first incident cited in the book occurred when a student filed a complaint of sexual harassment against Walcott, who was then a visiting professor at Harvard. "In a discussion of the student's poetry," reads a June 8, 1982 article in The Harvard Crimson, "the professor suddenly said that he did not want to discuss poetry and began to discuss sex, asking the students, 'Would you make love with me?' The student [who filed the complaint] declined Walcott's advances and reportedly received the only C in the class." The Dean of the Faculty at Harvard "admonished" Walcott in a letter and recommended that his ongoing position at Boston University be revoked. BU, however, opted to keep Walcott on staff.
The second incident, from 1996, involved a BU student who claimed that Walcott refused to produce her play after she turned down sex with him, the New York Times reported. The student and the professor settled the matter out of court.
While I do acknowledge the seriousness of these decades-old allegations, an orchestrated attempt to discredit a poet has succeeded, and, because of the obsession with correct conduct in academia, this controversy may outlast the seemingly eternal beauty of Walcott's work. Writers have not always had to worry about their personal lives eclipsing the quality of their art; when you think of previous generations, many of the world's great poets have not exactly been characterized by their conservatism and prudence. Indeed, if you list off the wordsmiths commonly found on English 101 syllabi, the social delinquents seem to greatly outnumber the strait-laced paradigms of decency.
Let's do a run-through: Samuel Coleridge was in constant need of that opium fix; Dylan Thomas drank himself to death; Ezra Pound was fascist and anti-Semitic; Allen Ginsberg talked of his weed-induced spiritual revelations; John Cheever came on to most of his students and drank inordinate amounts of scotch while he taught classes; Arthur Rimbaud smoked hash and went on absinthe-induced benders-oh, and then Paul Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist. And the list goes on.
Though today these poets and writers would, evidently, not have a chance at becoming the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, their work survives in classrooms because scholars recognize that their brilliance is independent of the way they lived their lives. And, having read his widely acclaimed long-form poem Omeros, I can say with certainty that Walcott deserves a place among these long-gone poets whose words still echo in the books of today's students. If Walcott's poetry manages to rise above these attacks and make it to reading lists on future college campuses, it will be a true example of poetic justice.
Nathan Freeman is a Trinity senior. His column will run every other Thursday during the summer.
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