By Jennifer Keohane While the heat and humidity have made those in DC lethargic and prone to staying inside and binging on Netflix, on Twitter, it’s always a perfect 75 degrees with conditions ripe for character assassination. My case today comes from the recent wave of primary elections ahead of November’s midterms. In New York’s …
Continue reading On Authenticity and Character Assassination
By Sergei A. Samoilenko In March 2012, Teju Cole, an American writer, photographer, and art historian, wrote on his Twitter account, “The fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. The white saviour supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.” It …
Continue reading On Western Paternalism, Suffering Others, and White Knight Syndrome
By Martijn Icks Few names in history hold as much terror as that of Vlad Dracula, “Little Dragon”, also known as Vlad the Impaler. Many people are aware that the blood-curdling stories about the man’s cruelties inspired the Victorian novelist Bram Stoker to name his vampiric creation Count Dracula. What is much less well known …
In Head in the Clouds: The Ridicule of Socrates in Classical Athens, Martijn Icks started a new year by looking to the past and examining how a satirical play may have impugned Socrates' reputation decades before his execution. Later in the month, Jennifer Keohane reflected on her own personal struggle with ad hominem attacks following …
By Martijn Icks Women don’t have it easy in politics. They are held to high, often conflicting, standards by men, but perhaps by other women too. If they happen to be attractive, they run the risk of being shelved in the “bimbo” or “dumb blonde” category: all beauty, no brains. Others may be criticized for …
Continue reading Femmes Fatales in Ancient Rome: Messalina and Agrippina
Clearly, a brandjacked and counterfeited social cause is a serious issue. When pinpointing and punishing a few guilty scapegoats is generally prescribed as a solution to a complex issue, there is less urgency to promote real structural changes. By trivializing the campaign, multiple influencers with vested interests stonewall the necessary development of numerous matters such as women’s autonomy, broken legal systems, and institutionalized structural violence in Hollywood.
It seems that at least for now, sexual hypocrisy will be punished, but firearm hypocrisy will not be.
Was Robert Bork a victim of Character Assassination?
By Sergei Samoilenko Last week I had a chance to discuss several issues related to character attacks against scientists with my colleagues at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In April 2017, thousands of scientists took to the streets in Washington, D.C. and more than 600 other cities worldwide in a unanimous …
Continue reading Responding to Misinformation and Character Assassination in Science
Character Assassination and Reputation Politics Research Lab 