[INDOLOGY] Sexism and Bias on INDOLOGY governing committee

[KORN Agnes]

Dear all,

I, too, would like to contribute to the costs of running the Indology list.
It would be very sad, I think, if the costs were an argument that someone should be prevent from saying Thankyou to a post they found interesting, or, for that matter, if financial issue should prevent someone from sending a message.

Also, while I entirely understand (and support) the point of reducing digital noise etc., a 1-2 line Thankyou is, so far as I can see, entirely common on mailing lists, and may in fact be a welcome return to the person who posted the information.
As much as I struggle with the daily load of messages, such small friendly mails are no problem to me.

Best,
Agnes


From: INDOLOGY [mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info] On Behalf Of Nagaraj Paturi via INDOLOGY
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2019 6:53 AM
To: Harry Falk
Cc: Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Sexism and Bias on INDOLOGY governing committee

Since the 'specific' instance mentioned by Dr Truschke was pertaining to Prof. Dominik Wujastyk's individual message to me that was later brought to the notice of the list by Dr Truschke, I thought it may be pertinent to share what continued after that message from Prof. Wujastyk to me.

To that message, I responded to Prof. Wujastyk and the Indology-owner id as follows:

I honour your instruction , Prof. Dominik Wujastyk.

Prof. Wujastyk responded to me as follows:

Dear Professor Paturi,

I'm really grateful for your gracious response.

As you saw in the INDOLOGY post from Audrey Truschke, she was cross with me for writing to you, and she said she doesn't agree that I should have done so.  On reflection, I think I was wrong in an important respect respect: I didn't check with the other committee members before writing under the "committee" name.  And I was a bit impulsive.  My message had nothing to do with you personally, in fact.  I was looking at the overall volume of messages on the list and thinking about the signal-to-noise ratio of list posts.  I also worry about the fact that individual posts to the list nowadays append multiple copies of all the previous messages posted on that topic.  I personally pay for the storage of all archived messages out of my own pocket and also the network bandwidth used by the conversations, which rises every year.  So I do have general concerns about conciseness and economy of expression in the forum.  I have written to others in the past with some of these concerns.  It's probably a Quixotic quest: few people today think about these issues of economic data usage, although they were a major topic when the internet was new.  Perhaps I'm a dinosour in this respect.

Thank you again,
With best regards,
Dominik Wujastyk

I responded to him and the Indology-owner id as follows:

Dear Prof. Dominik Wujastyk,

You need not explain that this far. I understand your good intentions and your difficult task and responsibility as the moderator. I did what I thought is the best way a member can help the manager run a forum.

I thought responses such as thanking a member give happiness to the member only when done in public. This thought came to me because I several times received thanking , admiring and other such positive responses from the members as individual mails to me and wondered about what was stopping them from making such expressions in public.

This message from you increased my respect for you since it reveals a great gentle and gracious attitude on your part.

Thanking you for reaching out to me.

Warm regards,

Nagaraj


On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 12:53 AM Harry Falk via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
> to prevent what I
> have experienced, internally on the committee,

Reading for (precious) hours and trying to find our whether my sense for
the meaning of texts in English has vanished into thin air: WHAT has
happened? WHO has said what TO WHOM?

> Inappropriate, biased behavior

This sounds terrible and must certainly be condemned. Maybe US academics
know by these terms alone what was said or done, but old-style Europeans
do not. Where and how does "biased" start? Name the culprit(s)! Tell how
they misbehaved! No quarter, no mercy.
Or should we plan for two INDOLOGY lists, one for the ladies and one for
men? The question for quota inside the two committees would then be
answered.
Best,
Harry Falk



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--
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.


Director,  Inter-Gurukula-University Centre for Indic Knowledge Systems.
BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS, Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Veliyanad, Kerala

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )





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