Freedom to Discriminate

Summary

White supremacist misappropriations of the European Middle Ages have been increasingly visible and difficult to ignore for scholars of medievalism and medieval studies and the general public alike in the past several years with the mainstreaming of far-right politics in the western hemisphere and beyond. There have been, particularly in the last two years or so, numerous public-facing articles and statements by medievalists correcting and condemning racist misappropriations of the European Middle Ages,following more than a decade of published scholarship critiquing racialized medieval-isms.In a social climate of overt racism, it is perhaps not surprising that discrimination within medieval studies has also become more visible to more of us. Medievalists of color have spoken and written of their experiences of being discriminated against in professional settings from conferences to job interviews.Numerous professional organizations have made statements asserting their support for diversity and inclusion: the Medieval Academy of America, for example, aims “to foster an environment of diversity, inclusion, and academic freedom for all medievalists.”

Freedom from discrimination is, in current political contexts, nonetheless often trumped by the freedom to discriminate. Responses from with the academy have tended, particularly but not exclusively in the US, to link resistance to racism and other forms of discrimination to academic freedom: the capacity and right of individual academics to choose what material they study, and how – that is, to discriminate among material, approaches, and methods. The far-right itself asserts that “political correctness” limits academic freedom by challenging hate speech and racism (among other forms of resistance to discrimination) with a discourse that goes back to at least the 1960s.As historian Eve Haque points out: “particular conceptions of academic freedom can overshadow issues of justice for racialized members of the academy.”Haque argues that “issues of explicit and systemic institutional discrimination” must be overcome for academic freedom to be reconceptualized in ways that do not reinscribe marginalization of scholars of color.Those forms of discrimination and marginalization and the ways they are perpetuated must be recognized before they can be challenged. For medieval studies this includes the long history of racisms with which our disciplines are entangled.