Posts Tagged‘ethics’

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Five Things That Make Me A Happy Practicing Writer

by Erika Dreifus on
8

I’m trying to be positive here. Rather than rant away about certain aspects of our writing culture that tick me off all too often (and, ahem, all too recently), I’m going to praise a few aspects of the 21st-century writing life that invariably make me grateful, happy, and otherwise at peace:

1) Writing-focused Listservs and writing organization blogs that stay on-topic.

2) Writing-focused Listservs and writing organization blogs that remain free of ad hominem attacks (see above).

3) Seeing translators credited for the invaluable work that they do bringing us writing we’d otherwise be unable to read.

4) Seeing writer-researchers credited for bringing quotations, resources, and opportunities to their communities when others pass the information along.

5) Auto-responders that confirm receipt of a manuscript, explain that the correspondent is away until such-and-such time and isn’t likely to respond until after that date, or otherwise reduce one’s anxiety level.

That’s not my complete list, but it’s a start. What would you add? What elements of contemporary writing life and culture do you most appreciate?

Reflections on the Current Creative Writing Consulting Controversy

by Erika Dreifus on
7

When I drafted yesterday’s post mentioning Abramson Leslie Consulting, the new firm offering services for prospective graduate students in creative writing, I had no idea about the storm that was brewing in the blogosphere around it. As I suggested in the post, there’s been controversy concerning similar ventures for prospective undergraduates. But I have to admit that the speed and intensity of the opposition to Abramson Leslie has surprised me. So I’ve been reading the objections as I’ve discovered them (for just a sampling, see the comment threads here and here). And I’ve been trying to formulate my own response, wondering why I did not react to the discovery of the new enterprise with the same vehement dismay so many others have.

My first reflection: Maybe I’m simply jaded. After all, I attended a high school where it was common for students to “train” locally with a private SAT “coach.” I worked with one. Would I have attained Harvard admission and National Merit Scholarship eligibility “on my own,” without the structure of my tutor’s assignments and the time I spent reviewing sample tests with her? Possibly. Was I too intimidated/crazed by the insane level of competition within the top stratum of my high school class to risk a bad test performance? Yes. Does the fact that I also had the transcript (four years of challenging coursework and high grades), recommendations, mini-essays and personal statement, and everything else that was required to confirm the test results and affirm the appropriateness of both the Harvard admission letter and the ultimate National Merit Scholarship award I received mean anything? I think so. But some might have doubts.

Then I thought: Maybe I’m simply less focused on the portfolio review portion of the services. That, after all, seems to be the aspect driving much of the online upset. Maybe my experiences are leading me to consider instead the broader array of services the new firm says it’s offering, like helping prospective applicants draw up lists of potential schools. Maybe I’m thinking of all the time I’ve spent responding to strangers’ e-queries concerning low-residency MFA applications/admissions. Brief exchanges I’ve sustained gratis, but if people really wanted my personalized response to their questions and my extended attention, I did charge for the service back when I was freelancing and adjuncting full-time. I can envision doing so again if appropriate.

And that is at least in part because it is established professional practice to do so. I do not see a difference, for example, between the consulting services for MFA applicants that are offered by respected organizations like Grub Street or the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop and those from Abramson Leslie. Except, of course, for the fact that Seth Abramson (whom I do not know personally although we are both contributors to the second edition of Tom Kealey’s Creative Writing MFA Handbook) sure seems to have made a lot of enemies. And the curious situation that no one seems to be complaining as strenously about other organizations’ apparently higher fees.

Then, when I read protests about the products of consultations presenting inflated impressions of applicants’ inherent abilities, I recalled that my own MFA application submission was workshopped multiple times (and, horrors, even reviewed by a paid Grub Street consultant). Not, it’s true, because I wanted to polish it for the MFA application, but because I was seeking to perfect that first novel chapter for an agent/publication. So how representative of an applicant’s (my) inherent ability was that writing sample? How representative is any sample that’s been critiqued (and hopefully, improved) thanks to the paid work of trained, professional others?

There’s another point the anti-Abramson Leslie voices are making that I keep thinking about. It goes something like this: Abramson Leslie is “unethical” and “disgusting” (to cite two adjectives I’ve seen) because it’s not only morally wrong to give people who can and are willing to pay the fees a presumed advantage in this process. The endeavor will also lead to a sort of corruption of the (presumably, heretofore unadulterated) arena of artistic talent that is a graduate writing workshop and program, not merely because candidates will henceforth be admitted on the basis of work that isn’t really representative of their abilities, but also due to the tragic consequence that their peers will have to suffer through reading utterly abysmal original work when they could have enjoyed the gorgeous prose or poetry of someone more innately gifted—who didn’t (or couldn’t) pay for an application portfolio review.

Well, I hate to break this news, but in my experience, at least, the system just isn’t that pure. There is plenty of abysmal work being circulated in graduate writing workshops. And, again, for quite some time now, people have paid good money for other consultants, conferences, and workshops to improve their work (whether with the express intent of using the advice for graduate writing program applications or not).

I think, too, that those who are arguing against the portfolio review may not see it the way that I do. Based on my reading of the Abramsom Leslie Web site, for instance, I understand the consultants to be individuals who, as workshop teachers and other editorial consultants have done before them and will continue to do whether or not the new venture succeeds, will offer critiques and suggestions, not rewrites. If the client can’t apply the suggestions or think through questions the critiques raise, s/he actually isn’t going to be able to improve his or her work very much. And if s/he can, in fact, apply sound suggestions and engage with the critiques, maybe s/he is even more of an ideal candidate than one might have thought before the consultation began.

Finally, and with a bit of faith in the process, I am hypothesizing that someone who is truly unable to write poetry or prose at a level appropriate for graduate school may similarly lack a solid undergraduate transcript. Or strong recommendations. Or a satisfactory critical essay/GRE scores/statement(s) about herself or the books that have meant the most to her. I expect that someone applying to a graduate program in creative writing will present multiple qualifications in the application package. I am hoping that would-be graduate students in creative writing don’t waste the time they spend assembling these packages. Because if the writing sample truly were the only thing that mattered, there’d be no need for full applications in the first place.

But I hear the critics. Some of them I know, from other online discussions, at least. I respect them. I am still thinking about what they have to say. What say you?

The Wednesday Web Browser: Ethics Edition

by Erika Dreifus on
4

As has been widely reported, Ruth Padel, recently elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, has resigned the post before formally assuming it. As the Literary Saloon summarizes, “Apparently she was a bit more active in stirring things up against Derek Walcott — who took himself out of the running — than she had originally let on.” As usual, the same site provides helpful links for those seeking more info.
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New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt reports: “It has been a busy week or two for the ethics police — those within The Times trying to protect the paper’s integrity, and those outside, ready to pounce on transgressions by Times journalists.”
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Since this blog attracts a number of teachers (and students) of writing, I’m curious to know what you all think of online instructors purposely creating false profiles, what The Chronicle of Higher Education calls “‘ghost students’ that academics…have injected into online courses to kick-start discussions among students, keep them from dropping out, and spy on their communications.”

Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life Under Nazi Occupation

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Yesterday, I had some time between an afternoon day job-related meeting at the CUNY Graduate Center and an evening panel at the same location (not for the day job!), so I decided to mosey on over to the New York Public Library to visit a new exhibition, “Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life Under Nazi Occupation.”

The subject of French literary life under (and immediately following) Nazi occupation is something I studied as an undergraduate and have remained fascinated by for years. It’s not a simple matter (for one thing, the divisions between “collaboration” and “resistance” aren’t always clear). The exhibition does an excellent job presenting a complicated topic. Lots of books, journals, letters, etc. incorporated in the process. Video/newsreel footage, too.

If you’ll be around 5th Avenue/42nd Street before the end of July (the exhibition runs through July 25), do stop in and take a look. It’s free!

Calling Carter on His Claims

by Erika Dreifus on
6

As if the OJ book weren’t enough…now we have to deal with something that has actually been published. Worse, it has the potential to cause harm worldwide thanks to its faulty content and promulgation of anti-Israel mythologies.

Chances are you’ve seen former U.S. President Jimmy Carter promoting his new pro-Palestinian book lately (I’m not going to promote the title here) on television. Maybe you’ve read magazine/blog/newspaper coverage, too. He’s sure been getting a lot of sympathetic press and the book is a best-seller (and let’s all remember, of course, that he’s finding this success and much-more-than-15-minutes-of-fame within a media controlled by the “pro-Israel lobby,” as we’re told repeatedly by my not-so-favorite source, the National Book Critics Circle blog, and others). I’m not going to make it easy for anyone who wants to indulge in that kind of groundless and incendiary prose, but if you want evidence of I’m talking about (that would be understandable–I like evidence, too), you can Google “National Book Critics Circle,” find the blog, and search for the “interview” the NBCC president posted on November 29 with the former American president. Look for the follow-up piece as well. I’m trying to limit my time over at that blog these days, but I’d bet there’s been no subsequent follow-up describing the serious charges now being leveled against the book’s accuracy, the NBCC president’s claims (which, unfortunately, I suffered through when he contacted me personally–totally uninvited–to try to convey to me) to be focused on “content” notwithstanding.

To say that Jimmy Carter is pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel is an understatement, and, considering his accomplishments a generation ago at Camp David, it’s an almost unbelievably sad one. (It’s especially sad for me–my first time in a voting booth was November of 1976, when I watched my mom vote for Carter, Mondale, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan [we lived in New York at the time]. And my first letter to a public official [I was in second grade] was to Carter, whom I admired back then. Let’s just say I’m not quite so admiring now.)

Trouble is, lots of people are giving his book credibility.

Why should you or I have any doubts about it?

I’ll leave it to experts like Ken Stein and Dennis Ross to explain, as they did last evening on CNN:

Source: CNN’s “Situation Room”:

I’m Wolf Blitzer. You’re in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Former President Jimmy Carter is responding to the controversy flaring over his new best seller on the Middle East. A long time associate has now resigned in protest, calling the book one sided and inflammatory. President Carter says he’s not anti-Israel, he’s simply he says trying to spur the peace process forward.

Let’s turn to our Brian Todd, he’s watching this controversy unfold — Brian.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, the former president has said he wanted his new book to be provocative. He may not have counted on this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TODD (voice-over): A former president, now stands accused of taking sides, by some of those who worked closest with him on Middle East peace. Among Jimmy Carter’s critics, Emory University Professor Ken Stein, who just resigned as a Carter Center fellow. He tells CNN Carter’s new book, “Palestine Peace not Apartheid” distorts history.

KENNETH STEIN, RESIGNED FROM CARTER CENTER: I don’t believe that a former president of the United States has special privilege or prerogative to write history and perhaps invent it.

TODD: What is your problem with this title, “Palestine Peace not Apartheid”?

STEIN: There’s too much emotion in the Arab-Israel conflict already and I think this adds heat rather than light. When you use the word apartheid, what you’re doing is you’re saying that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in the territories is equivalent to what happened to the blacks in South Africa.

TODD: President Carter claims he’s not insinuating that Israel is perpetrating racial apartheid, but…

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Israel has penetrated and occupied, confiscated and colonized major portions of the territory belonging to the Palestinians.

TODD: As for the inaccuracies Stein alleges are in the book, most deal with dates or events. Carter says he fact checked the book with a prominent Middle East journalist and an Emory University history professor who also works at the Carter Center. But Stein also suggests Carter took material without attribution.

STEIN: Two of the maps that appear on page 148 of the book are very similar, are incredibly similar, to two maps that appeared in Dennis Ross’ memoir, “The Missing Peace.”

TODD: But Stein is clear, he is not accusing Jimmy Carter of plagiarism. As for the former president?

CARTER: My maps came from an Atlas that’s publicly available.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TODD: We tried to contact the firm that Carter says he got those maps from, it’s called the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem to see if they got those maps from Dennis Ross. We were unable to reach that company. A spokeswoman for President Carter’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, says they are tracking all of these accusations, but they stand by the president’s book — Wolf.

BLITZER: Brian, thank you for that. And as Brian just reported, Professor Stein at Emory suggests the former president’s book contains several maps that are extremely similar to those in a memoir by a top veteran of Middle East policy.

And joining us now is Dennis Ross, he’s the former chief U.S. Middle East negotiator. He’s the author of “The Missing Peace, The inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace.” An important book on the subject. Dennis thanks very much for coming in. So who is right, the former president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, or Ken Stein who worked with him for a long time, a man you know quite well?

DENNIS ROSS, AUTHOR, “THE MISSING PEACE”: Well, look, I’m not going to get into a debate over who is right, other than to say that in terms of what I have seen from the book, and I have to be clear, I haven’t read the book, but I looked at the maps.

BLITZER: You haven’t read “Palestine Peace not Apartheid”?

ROSS: I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I looked at the maps and the maps he uses are maps that are drawn basically from my book. There’s no other way they could — even if he says they come from another place. They came originally from my book. BLITZER: We’re going to put them up on the screen on the wall behind you. But the whole notion, what’s the big deal if he lifted maps from your book and put them in his book?

ROSS: You know, the attribution issue is one thing, the fact that he’s labeled them as an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton idea is just simply wrong. The maps were maps that I created because at Camp David and then with the Clinton ideas, we never presented maps, but we presented percentages of withdrawal and we presented as well criteria for how to draw the lines. So after I left the government, when I wrote this book, I actually commissioned a mapmaker, to take those and produce them for the first time.

BLITZER: And then he put virtually the same map in his book without saying this came from you. I want you to listen to what he said specifically about this. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: I’ve never seen Dennis Ross’ book. I’m not knocking it, I’m sure it’s a very good book, but my maps came from an atlas that’s publicly available. And I think it’s the most authentic map that you can get.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: You heard his explanation how– would you say your maps wound up in his book.

ROSS: Well, the reality is the place he got it from, had to get it from mine. I published it before, number one. Number two, you would think that if you wanted to write about the facts of what went on, you would go to a book where a participant actually wrote them and then developed the maps in light of what we had put on the table. Now, again, if the purpose is to say, you’re presenting facts, then you should present facts. To say that his map is an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton ideas is simply not true. These were the Clinton ideas. If he were to say that…

BLITZER: On that point, he’s told me that he understands better what happened at Camp David, where you were one of the principal negotiators, than the former president himself. I want you to listen to this exchange that we had the other day, right here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: I hate to dispute Bill Clinton on your program, because he did a great and heroic effort there. He never made a proposal that was accepted by Barak or Arafat.

BLITZER: Why would he write that in his book if he said Barak accepted and Arafat rejected it?

CARTER: I don’t know. You can check with all the records, Barak never did accept it. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ROSS: That’s simply not so.

BLITZER: Who is right, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton on this question which is so relevant as to whether or not the Israelis at Camp David at the end of the Bill Clinton administration accepted the proposals the U.S. put forward?

ROSS: The answer is President Clinton. The Israelis said yes to this twice, first at Camp David, there were a set of proposals that were put on the table that they accepted. And then were the Clinton parameters, the Clinton ideas which were presented in December, their government, meaning the cabinet actually voted it. You can go back and check it, December 27th the year 2000, the cabinet voted to approve the Clinton proposal, the Clinton ideas. So this is — this is a matter of record. This is not a matter of interpretation.

BLITZER: So you’re saying Jimmy Carter is flat wrong.

ROSS: On this issue, he’s wrong. On the issue of presenting his map as an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton ideas, that’s simply not so.

BLITZER: What about this issue that is part of the title of his book that Israel in effect has created an apartheid on the West Bank in the Palestinian territories?

ROSS: You know obviously I disagree with that. You know I would, as a general point, Wolf, I would say everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to their own facts. One of the reasons I wrote this book was to lay out what had actually happened. We live in a world, especially in the Middle East, where part of the reason we have a conflict is because we have mythologies and you can’t reconcile the mythologies. You want to make peace, you have to reconcile to reality.

BLITZER: The — and when I interviewed him, he said he hopes this book does spark a serious debate. Earlier today, though, he says that U.S. politicians, the news media are intimidated by the Israel lobby in the United States and they really don’t speak out forcefully on the Palestinian question. Listen precisely to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: There’s a tremendous intimidation in this country that has silenced our people, and it’s not just individuals, it’s not just folks that are running for office. It’s the news media as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What do you say to that charge, that’s a very serious charge.

ROSS: Well, has it silenced him at this point or did it silence him up until now? Are we to presume that everything he has said up until today was a function of intimidation and now he’s not intimidated?

BLITZER: So your bottom line on his book, “Palestine Peace not Apartheid”, because it is sparking a lot of controversy out there.

ROSS: My bottom line is if you put something in here that I can see without question is not what the reality was, not what the fact was, that is in a sense, helping to promote a mythology, not a fact. I can — look, we have to understand a certain history here. President Carter made a major contribution to peace in the Middle East. That’s the reality.

BLITZER: In 1978 and ’79, the Camp David Accords.

ROSS: And the Egyptian/Israeli Peace Treaty, there’s no question about that. I would like him to meet the same standard that he applied then to what he’s doing now.

BLITZER: Dennis Ross, thanks very much for coming in.

ROSS: You’re welcome.

Standards, indeed. Would that “the media,” bloggers and the commenters who respond to them included, might aspire to them as well.