Obligatory post about the Deal Hudson case

After reading the NCR story and allowing a day's reflection, I concluded that NCR was not justified to run the story. They were hacked off about Ono Ekeh, pure and simple, as they admit in the article's introduction. They're secularists and Democrats, who insist that they're good Catholics, who smolder at the symbolic rebuke to them that Ekeh's firing represented. So they jumped at the occasion to destroy Hudson.

A key issue, I think, is how Hudson's misconduct differs from the homosex priest-predator scandal.

Dr. Hudson's misconduct, while disgusting and immoral, was not a crime. His employer didn't give him two weeks of therapy and reassign him to another department--nlike most bishops with actual sex criminals in their employ did. Fordham fired him and he lost his tenure. That's as bad as it gets in academia.

Fordham did not bare its teeth at Hudson's accuser and intimidate her with expensive, high-powered lawyers. They assessed her accusation, found it credible, and fired him. Furthermore, Hudson paid a five-figure settlement for his misconduct--from his own pocket, not from the pockets of Fordham donors or students. Again, in stark contrast to the way most bishops have handled actual sex criminals in their employ.

Hudson made a career change--and succeeded impressively, as we know, turning Crisis from a sleepy, financially weak 'zine to a professional, polished operation.

However, Hudson should *never* have signed on to be a Bush adviser. Politics in the US is war between traditionals and autonomists, and he knows this as well as anyone else. This was *going* to come out. He should not have put Bush in that position.

What's amusing about NCR's mealy-mouthed justification for their hit job, is that they have long prided themselves on being an allegedly highbrow and high-class publication. They pooh-pooh the Wanderer for low journalistic standards. Well, they lowered themselves to the gutter here, and revealed themselves for the cheap autonomist political hacks that they are.

In case it's not completely clear from my post above: Fordham acted rightly and properly in firing Dr. Hudson. He suffered punishment fitting to his misconduct, which was a gross professional as well as moral offense.

Hudson didn't get off light, unlike homosex priest-predators who were coddled by US dioceses during the past generation and a half. DH was punished properly for his crime, and rightly expelled from the profession whose code of conduct he violated.

Also by contrast, there is NO comparison whatever between Ekeh's firing and publicizing Hudson's past sins. Ono Ekeh used Church computers, while earning a salary from the faithful exceeding $50,000 per year, to actively fight against the Church's teaching. He was rightly fired for doing that. The NCR bemoaned the fact that a man with a wife and three kids shouldn't be fired. For what he did, he was rightly fired. Tough.

Hudson, on the other hand, acted rightly in pressing the USCCB to fire Ekeh. A hit job article bringing up Hudson's past sins, for which DH has been punished and suffered appropriately, was *not* justified. No comparison whatever.

A quick little note about the governorship of New Jersey from a proud citizen of that great state:

Besides the President, the governor of New Jersey is the most powerful government executive in the United States. All positions are appointed --no voting for judges or attorney generals here. As we all learning (as we in NJ learned a couple years ago when Christie Whitman left for the EPA) the NJ governor has the power to appoint his or her own successor should he or she resign before the end of a term. He also has a lot of fun veto powers: absolute veto, line-item veto on appropriations bills, and conditional veto--that is he vetos a bill unless and until suggested changes are made.

I am curious about the policies of other universities. I think Fordham is unusual in firing a tenured professor for having a sexual encounter with an adult student. Does anyone know what the general approach is to situations like this one?

I suspect it's not so unusual, given concerns about sexual harassment that quite rightly arise in teacher-student "relationships."

RC says to me: "Bunk." To which I say: I respectfully disagree. Governor of 8.6 million people does not mean you own them, or even have much pull. Republican governors would give their eyeteeth to get a weekly call with Rove. Most Democratic governors would probably hold their nose and leap at the opportunity. McGreevey was playing minor league ball, and wasn't even a star. Hudson was getting serious playing time in the major leagues.

As to the question of tenure, Charles Williams is correct that Fordham would be VERY unusual in firing a tenured prof for having a consensual affair with an adult student, and would be very vulnerable to lawsuits and bad publicity. Conspiracy theorists may see in the fact that Hudson was booted evidence of the vast left-wing conspiracy of which Fordham will no doubt be surprised to learn its a part. Anyone familiar with the tenure system and academe will recognize that there must have been very serious evidence not of an affair but of a coercive abuse of position and of subsequent intimidation.

Has anyone claimed Fordham conspired against Hudson? I haven't noticed. I don't think they did. And I'm an academic, and I have a sense of how things are in academia, and when a prof puts the moves on his own student, that's (rightly) going to be considered very serious - probably grounds for termination (even for a tenured prof) - pretty much anywhere, I suspect.

And there's a difference between being able to talk to someone and necessarily having much real power.

No crime? I don't think that calling his actions "rape" is at all unjustified. The student, not of legal age for alcohol, was apparently extremely intoxicated--I truly doubt that she was able to give consent in any meaningful way. I think that Hudson is quite lucky that she, for whatever reason, didn't press criminal charges.

How is this really so different from the situation of the priest abusers? Older male in a position of authority plies younger person with alcohol, fondles the younger person, has the younger person perform sexual acts upon him, and later, when those in authority discover this, hush money is paid.

Jeff, surely you recognize the difference between real, tangible executive power and intangible "influence." RC is absolutely correct: how many people has Hudson appointed to public office? Does he command thousands of National Guard troops? Appoint judges? Oversee law enforcement?

Please, a little perspective.

I couldn't help wondering if there actually were a little something conspiratorial going on in connection with the NCR piece. Joe Feuerherd seems to have a copy of Cara Poppas' complaint to Fordham. Is it possible that some staffer at the university leaked Hudson's personnel files to him?

It didn't necessarily happen that way. Maybe Poppas herself or her lawyer disclosed the ten-year-old document. So far I haven't seen anything in Feuerherd's article or his "Notebook" column to settle the question of how he got the information, so this is mere idle speculation on my part.

The description of the "incident" sounds fishy. The details sound like they're from an unimaginative pornographic story. Obviously, something happened -- Hudson admitted as much -- but whether it was as sordid as related in NCR story, we don't know.

Whoa there Eric.

The fact that the details sound "unimaginative" makes it all the more believable. If the story was that they had done Act X or Y while swinging from trapezes with lighted tiki torches, would that make it more credible?

Look, I know how easy it is for someone to make up stories about men, and how difficult (okay, impossible) it is to prove a negative. But this behavior sounds predatory to me.

My position, such as it is, is that Mr. Hudson probably did this or something a lot like it for him to shell out thirty large and accept being sacked. From the religious standpoint, I have to assume he's forgiven, and I have to let that stand for what it is, not rub his nose in it. Does that mean I would let him take my (hypothetical) 19-year-old daughter out for a drink?

Probably not. At least not without a heavily armed chaperone.

I think Deal would have shelled out the money and accepted the removal of his tenure even if the details the NCR story gives aren't completely accurate. Even if she wasn't dead drunk and he didn't seduce her, he was still a 40-something professor getting it on with one of his barely-adult (only 18) students. That's a major breach of trust right there.

We only have one side of the story; crying rape is premature, uncharitable, and most likely politically motivated.

Oh, and BTW: whether Hudson was more powerful than McGreevey or not is totally irrelavent. First of all, the Hudson NCR piece exposes something that happened ten years ago, long before Hudson's influence with Bush began (and, for that matter, before Bush had served in any public office) while McGreevey's screwing around is quite recent. Second, McGreevey did not really resign over sex. He resigned over the rampant corruption that was going on in his administration and the corrupt garbage he was involved in (like leaving the Homeland Security Adviser position practically vacant so his paramour, who had not homeland security qualifications, could have a cushy, high-paying job). He's just playing the Clinton and "Coming-Out" cards simultaneously to get public sympathy and divert attention from the real reasons he's gotta go.

By "unimaginative," I meant that the details sounded like they someone with no imagination had made them up. I suspect that the story has been embellished, but we don't know.

I hesitate to even say anything about this because I used to be a friendly acquaintance of Hudson's, and I don't think he deserves any of this. The whole thing makes me sick and I see no reason NCR needed to publish it in the first place, except to be whores for the Culture of Death Party. Maybe "hit men" is a better job description.

Eric,

I share your frustration. I have had friends over the years who were seemingly solid, moral Christian men who did things that shocked and saddened me. One of them went on an arson spree, for instance, because the cognitive dissonance between his Christian exterior and the fact of his adulterous affair became too much for him to stand.

So it is shocking and disappointing when someone we know well does something of this nature. And I don't know the details, but Mr. Hudson says he committed "a serious sin" with the young woman. Regardless of the details, that alone is enough.

Forgiveness and compassion are hard. They are the hardest things about being a Catholic, or any kind of Christian. And thinking you knwo someone is no safeguard against depraved behaviour on their part, or on your own part either!

EVERYONE sins. But some people have the misfortune, even after their sins are forgiven and penance done, of having those sins exposed to public view. It always reminds me of the line from Ps. 31: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

Hey I forgive Deal Hudson. If he's genuinely sorry for what he has done I forgive him without reservation. That out of the way let's be a little realistic. We are all adults here after all.

It is extremely unlikely that Cara Poppas is the only young female who Hudson took advantage of over the course of his life. Men who behave like this with 18 year old girls (26 years younger than him) don't just do it once.

A relatively chaste Catholic married man in a marriage he is committed to doesn't suddenly find himself in a West Village bar drinking tequila "body shots" from the torsos of young students. To be in the bar in the first place requires pre-meditation.

The same sort of individual doesn't then take a drunken female easily young enough to be his daughter back to his (third) wife of seven years to collect his car and drive her back to campus knowing full well that he intends to have sexual intercourse with her. He puts her in a cab!

That kind of debauched behaviour needs years of practice and you need to build up your confidence through other episodes. And once you have all that practice and experience it is not likely you are going to go to confession one day and suddenly find yourself chaste and not subject to enormous temptation.

It's possible, but it is the stuff that saints are made of, it is why hermits go into the desert and monks live in Monastries and holy men flagelate themselves.

If Deal Hudson is genuinely contrite for whatever behaviours he is guilty of he should step aside from Public life and make room for someone with a bit more self control and a bit less of a track record. A man who was genuinely sorry would be concerned about the scandal his past would cause and step aside.

If he was genuinely contrite shortly after this 1994 episode and it was a one off incident, then I find it somewhat odd that he choses to write articles like this.

http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/hudson/collegesurvey.html

Natural repugnance of their past behaviour would tend to put most contrite men off penning an article with that particular title.

Good DEAL of Hubris, I say

Mike has a fair point. Sad to say, it's not altogether shocking that Dr. Hudson behaved badly in 1994: if a man has two failed marriages, it is a bad track record.

Sorry, Mike. If only the perfect are allowed to speak, we'll be waiting on the Lord to return before we can have any moral leadership.

In the Church we are led by the Perfect Son of God through the administration of imperfect men. Neither are any of us laymen perfect -- not Deal, not I, and not "mike" of the anonymous E-mail.

As for the behaviour itself, I conceded above that it smacked of predation, but that assumes facts not in evidence.

RC, he didn't have two "failed marriages" -- they weren't marriages at all, according to the Church, as they were annulled.

I'm very sorry that Mike chose to relate the sordid details, which I was not going to repeat, but since he has, I'll say it again: we only have one side of the story. The details aren't congruent with anyone who has ever read Hudson's writings or met him in person. It sounds silly and childish, like a typical frat boy. Not at all like someone who can discuss Thomism and Augustine's view of the Trinity.

I am not saying the story is wholly true or false. I'm saying that we don't know, and we owe him the benefit of the doubt.

OK, Eric. He had two failed putative marriages. Their defective character doesn't make them less of a "bad track record" for family stability.

Eric, you're having trouble reconciling your image of Deal Hudson as erudite philosopher (based on your acquaintance with him and his writings) with an image of Deal Hudson as sexual predator. Why can't he both? I'm speaking hypothetically here, of possibilities only, since I doubt you would accept the later image. But you seem to have concluded that intellectual ability (after all, he can discuss Augustine and Thomas) forecloses base behavior. Why can't he do both? Does intellectual ability mean that he would tend to sin in a creative and unique, not banal, way? Some people are good at hiding or compartmentalizing their behavior.

Agreed, Bill -- one can certainly be an intellectual and a bad man, even a monster. (Pol Pot was a good student in Paris, I hear.) Yet I find the outlandish description (body shots? kissing two students at the same time?) to be implausible. If you told me he had an affair with another professor, or even a drunken encounter with a student, I might not be so skeptical, but all the surrounding events sound fishy.