Ethnographers on "On the Run" (Not)

I have written several highly critical articles and blog posts about Alice Goffman’s book On the Run, pointing out that she described committing a crime in the course of the six years she spent observing the “6^th Street Boys” in a struggling Philadelphia neighborhood.  In this post, I will turn to others in the field of ethnography who, at best, ignored or were unaware of the deep flaws and troubling conduct evident in Prof. Goffman’s work.  Moreover, the sociology/ethnography establishment still appears, with slight exception, to be defending Goffman, while making it thus far impossible to get closer to the truth of her claims.

Goffman has now given two sharply conflicting accounts of the events, in the summer of 2007, following the murder of her subject “Chuck,” whom she befriended in the course of her fieldwork.  In On the Run, she wrote that she had joined an armed hunt for a rival gang member who was believed to be the killer.  Chuck’s friends had “acquired more and more guns,” in preparation for what Goffman called “part three” of an ongoing “war” with the nearby 4^th Street Boys, in which three men had already been killed. [Note:  Readers familiar with the story can skip the next few paragraphs, and pick up again after the second block quote.]

“Many nights,” said Goffman, a gang member pseudonymously named “Mike” drove through the streets of Philadelphia “looking for the shooter, the guys who were part of his crew, or women connected to them who might be able to provide a good lead.”  She continued,

On a few of these nights, Mike had nobody to ride along with him, so I volunteered.  We started out around 3:00 a.m., with Mike in the passenger seat, his hand on his Glock as he directed me around the area.  We peered into dark houses and looked at license plates and car models as Mike spoke on the phone with others who had information about the 4^th Street Boys’ whereabouts.

She did this, wrote Goffman, not because she wanted to learn firsthand about violence, but because she “wanted Chuck’s killer to die.”  Then,

One night Mike thought he saw a 4^th Street guy walk into a Chinese restaurant.  He tucked his gun in his jeans, got out of the car, and hid in the adjacent alleyway.  I waited in the car with the engine running read to speed off as soon as Mike ran back and got inside.

I have quoted Goffman at length because I want to make it clear that her conduct, as she herself originally recounted it, amounts to conspiracy to commit murder.  She agreed to assist in the commission of a homicide, and she committed more than one “overt act” – driving the ambush car on multiple occasions – in furtherance of the scheme.

And yet, not a single academic sociologist or ethnographer pointed out the apparent criminality of Goffman’s self-described activity in the full year between the publication of On the Run and my reviews last month in The New Republic and The New Rambler.  Instead, luminaries such as Harvard’s Christopher Jencks called the book “an ethnographic classic,” and Tim Newburn, of the London School of Economics, hailed it as “sociology at its best.” I found only three negative reviews – by a law professor, an English professor, and a poet.  The many others were all glowing, by big names in top outlets.

I found that shocking.  In the summer of 2007, when the events in question occurred, 108 African-Americans were murdered in Philadelphia – averaging more than one each day – mostly young men, 94 of them by gunfire.  How could so many prominent reviewers endorse the work of a doctoral candidate who even considered contributing to the bloodshed? By what standard of scholarship is it permissible to be the driver in an armed manhunt, and to keep the engine running while a gunman stalks a possible victim?  How could the American Sociological Association give Goffman’s its annual “best dissertation” award – calling it “a landmark contribution to urban ethnography” – in light of Goffman’s claimed participation in plotting a potentially deadly ambush?

I raised these issues in The New Rambler and twice in The New Republic, expecting to see at least some public reaction from academic sociologists.  But the primary response came from Goffman herself, in the form of a four-page reply on her website, in which she completely revised her account of the incident.  Instead of an actual manhunt, says Goffman now, it was all “just talk.”  The Glock-in-hand drive-arounds were not really for the purpose of actual retribution, but only for show (notwithstanding her expressed desire for “Chuck’s killer to die” and Mike’s earlier nodding agreement that “somebody gon’ die regardless”).  The several pages of published narrative, she now says, were only a “summary,” and the true story involved “significant points” that she had never before revealed.

Remarkably, Goffman now claims that she was actually acting at the behest of “the neighborhood.”  In her response, she wrote,

After Chuck was shot and killed, people in the neighborhood were putting a lot of pressure on Mike and Chuck’s other friends to avenge his murder.  It seemed that Chuck’s friends were expected to fulfill the neighborhood’s collective desire for retribution.  Many of the residents in the neighborhood were emphatic that justice should be served, and the man who killed Chuck must pay.

Which “residents in the neighborhood” could she possibly be talking about?  Surely she could not mean the working people, parents of children, block club members, community activists, and young students of the 6^th Street community – all of whom would have been appalled at the thought of continuing the cycle of reciprocal violence that has brought so much grief to so many people. Has anyone ever known of a neighborhood where the “residents” wanted more gunfire?

Goffman told Philadelphia radio station WHYY that her work could be fact checked by comparing her claims to goings-on in other cities.  That is an appeal too truthiness; stuff just like this happens somewhere.  But can anyone identify a single non-gang member – anywhere – who has ever demanded more drive-by shootings, much less an entire neighborhood. 

When Michele Obama recently addressed the graduates of Chicago’s Martin Luther King College Prep High School, she reminded them of Hadiya Pendleton, who would also have graduated that day if she had not been the innocent victim of a drive-by gang shooting.  The First Lady sympathized with the grieving students and their families, saying:

If Hadiya's friends and family could survive their heartbreak and pain; if they could find organizations to honor her unfulfilled dreams; if they could inspire folks across this country to wear orange to protest gun violence, then I know you all can live your life with the same determination and joy that defined Hadiya's life.

Thus, Michele Obama led a grieving community in demanding an end to gunplay.  Goffman, however, wants us to believe that the residents of 6^th Street were collectively clamoring for gang members to perpetuate the violence, rather than insisting that they end it.  In her fantastic retelling, the gang members themselves had no intention to keep shooting, but were goaded into a  pretended show of force by their civilian neighbors.  Does anyone believe that really happened?  (And if something so extraordinary and meaningful did happen, why would she omit it from the book?)  To put it as mildly as possible, Goffman’s new story strains credulity.  Indeed, it calls her credibility even further into question concerning the many other unlikely events she depicted in On the Run.

And yet again, academic sociologists have said virtually nothing in public about her tortured explanation.  The University of Wisconsin, where Goffman is an assistant professor of sociology, issued a statement expressing “full support” for her work, and the chair of her department told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that there are no hard and fast rules in sociology surrounding the ethics of research.  Goffman’s publishers – the University of Chicago Press and Picador – both said that they “stand behind” the book.  Prof. Jack Katz of UCLA – who co-edits the University of Chicago Press series that published On the Run – told the New York Times that my review of Goffman’s book was “a misuse of professorial authority.”    In fact, it is Katz who has misused his authority – first by failing to catch the manifest flaws and ethical departures in On the Run before it was published, and now by defending it after they have been exposed.

So where does the truth lie?  Did Alice Goffman attempt to track down a man for a revenge killing, or was it all nothing but posturing?  Did community members really demand another shooting, or is that just Goffman’s after-the-fact excuse for her own reckless behavior?  Ordinarily, we might expect to find the answers in Goffman’s field notes, which either could or could not confirm some version of her conflicting accounts.  But that is impossible, because Goffman has shredded them (and disposed of her hard drive), apparently with at least the tacit assent of Princeton’s Institutional Review Board.  Even if such destruction is the norm in ethnography – and professional opinions appear to differ about that – the impossibility of verification remains a glaring problem.

Goffman’s dissertation advisor at Princeton, Prof. Mitchell Duneier, told the Chronicle of Higher Education that he met and interviewed some of Goffman’s subjects during the course of her graduate studies.  This proves that Goffman indeed did field work with people who actually existed – something that nobody has challenged – while leaving her many dubious claims unconfirmed.  To Duneier’s great credit, however, he also agreed that Goffman “crossed an ethical line” by driving the getaway car during the potential ambush.  Duneier’s admirable candor provides a welcome contrast to the apologetics of UCLA’s Katz, who has assumed the role of Goffman’s chief defender. He told the Chronicle that the only “ethical line she crossed, in a way, was honesty."  

Was Goffman honest about driving the getaway car in either On the Run or in her subsequent retelling?  As matters stand, we have only one surviving source of nearly contemporaneous information against which to test her claims.  Goffman’s dissertation was submitted at Princeton in 2010, only three years after Chuck’s murder and her own participation in the real or feigned vendetta.  What does it say about the events?  Does she describe her response to Chuck’s murder?  Does she mention “the neighborhood’s collective desire for retribution” or her own intentions during the Glock-drive?  Once again we are at an impasse, because Goffman has chosen to make her dissertation unavailable for inspection.

I have made multiple attempts to obtain a copy of Goffman’s dissertation, with no results thus far.  (I still have one promising iron in this fire, however, so there is some reason for hope.)  First, the Northwestern library tried to locate it in the Princeton library, only to learn that Goffman had been granted a permanent exemption from depositing her dissertation. Next, I discovered that Goffman’s thesis was never provided to ProQuest, in contrast to over 90% of all dissertations and theses from accredited institutions in North America.  Unbeknownst to me, an enterprising reference librarian at Northwestern also requested a copy directly from Prof. Goffman.  Although this happened before the publication of my first review, she never replied. 

Finally, I wrote to the executive director of the American Sociological Association, which had given Goffman its “dissertation of the year” award in 2011.  She did not write back.  This is the most baffling rebuff of all.  What is the point of honoring a dissertation that no one will ever be allowed to see?  It cannot serve as a model for current graduate students, it cannot be held up as an example of outstanding scholarship, and it cannot be a reference for future researchers.  Is there another discipline – in hard science, social science, the humanities, or the professions – in which prizes are bestowed under a permanent cone of silence? (A temporary delay would be different.  According to our library, the 2013 ASA winner, for example, has been embargoed until March 25, 2017 --  a four year time period that would have expired this year for Goffman's 2011 prize.)

At almost every stage of scholarship and publication, it appears that Goffman’s work has dodged rigorous scrutiny.  That was ultimately a disservice to her, as it led to the embarrassing publication of a book that – notwithstanding its significant subject matter and other merits – is plainly unreliable.  That is a shame.  Stripped of overstatements, On the Run would have been a far, far better book.  Alas, even prodigies need careful editors.

In law school, we teach our students the importance of accurate citation and fidelity to the record.  In law practice, our positions are subjected to counter-argument and cross examination.  We do not always get it right, but it can seldom be said that our contentions have gone untested.  The field of ethnography, alas, appears to have followed a far different path in Alice Goffman’s case. 

Comments

[Regional]

Continue this good work. I hope your points will continue to attract more and more attention.

[Jack]

I am 98% with you. You have made a persuasive and damning case that AG either committed a serious crime, or falsified her account, and that her discipline thought either was just fine. And yet, IMHO there is a slight sense in spots that this has become personal, and emphasis on some matters--what happened at the hospitals, say--distracts from clearer and stronger points.

[anonymous]

Fascinating. Keep up the pressure, the story here just doesn't make sense. Not sure exactly what's going on, but I wonder if she's spent some time in that chopper with Brian Williams?

[old school]

I don't know the truth of all matters here, but I do know this:
1. Debates and posts like this are what tenure is for, and those who seek to get rid of it forget the bullying that can happen if you do. Lubet is at Northwestern, but the weight being thrown around here would surely coax someone at Podunk U. into silence, if it hasn't already.

2. The idea of awarding "dissertation of the year" to a dissertation that no one can read seems awfully ridiculous.

[HL]

There is nothing "personal" or "mean" about Lubet's criticism of Goffman's book. I've seen comments in other places also call his behavior as "bullying". If the sociology considers this to be an over the top, harsh or bullying review of her methods... then the whole field is suspect. Which is basically what Lubet is saying in this piece.

[Philip Cohen]

In response to this situation I have proposed a rule change so that that ASA Dissertation Award is only granted to students who make their dissertations available: https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/proposal-rule-change-for-the-american-sociological-association-dissertation-award/

[silent majority]

Many sociologists, including ethnographers, began questioning OTR immediately after its publication. However, sociology is a very hierarchical discipline. Since her arrival at Princeton, Goffman has been a darling of of the elite of the discipline. As you have learned, any criticisms have been met with hostility and dismissal. Sociologists with less standing who dared to discuss the books many faults face charges that we were motivated by envy. We needed someone outside of Sociology to step forward. Many thanks.

[Bernie Burk]

This is a courageous and unstintingly fair examination of a range of deeply disturbing practices. Keep it up, Steve.

[Michelle Meyer]

HL -- Charges that replicators/fact-checkers are second-string bullies with no research agendas of their own are not unique to sociology. Read the piece I co-wrote with Chabris not quite a year ago in Slate for an example from psychology, and read The Case of the Amazing Gay-Marriage Data: How a Graduate Student Reluctantly Uncovered a Huge Scientific Fraud for an example from political science (omitting URLs to avoid spam trap).

Similarly, re: her suggestion that her work could be fact checked by comparing her claims to goings-on in other cities, cf. debates (especially in social psychology) about direct versus conceptual replication.

On the IRB angle, it's not clear to me that Goffman destroyed her notes even with its "tacit assent." Although she told the Chronicle, in the article you link to, that "IRB requirements" led her to destroy her notes, she told WHYY, which you also link to: "Princeton, where she completed her graduate work, requires researchers to keep their field notes for three years after publication, she said. After that time, she decided it was a safer bet to dispose of the notes so authorities couldn't subpoena information on her subjects, who were shielded with fake names." Needless to say, an IRB rule that researchers retain their raw data for at least three years is not the same thing as an "IRB requirement" that notes be destroyed after that time has passed.

That said, yes, IRBs do sometimes direct researchers to destroy raw data when that data poses significant risk to subjects, as her does. Zach Schrag recently reminded me that DOJ requires data destruction for some of the sensitive work it funds, for example. And there is also an ongoing, high profile mess of a case out of Boston College involving oral historians' struggle to maintain their promises of confidentiality to their IRA subjects in the face of subpoenas. So it's entirely possible that an IRB directed Goffman to destroy her notes. Aside from the business where Goffman may or may not have furthered the violence in 6th Street, data privacy is probably the biggest risk to these subjects (and likely also explains why she received an exemption from depositing her dissertation in the library).

On the other hand, the ASA ethics code discusses several methods of protecting subject data, including pseudonyms, destruction of identifiers, and keeping data under lock and key and limiting data sharing (otherwise, sociologists are expected under the ASA code, which is incorporated by reference in the ethics requirements for publication in the Am. Soc. Rev.'s, where Goffman published a version of her work, to be ready and willing to share data with other researchers). The ASA ethics code does not, if I recall correctly, discuss wholesale destruction of notes. Moreover, part of her research, reported in her ASR article and, I believe, in OTR, includes a survey of all homes in 6th Street (with an apparent 100% response rate!), and although that should have required its own IRB review--data collected included welfare status--I'd be more surprised if an IRB ordered that raw data destroyed, specifically.

In any case, for those of us who study the black boxes that are IRBs, or try to, it would be nice to know whether destruction of her notes was a specific IRB order or something she did on her own steam.

I'm also wondering exactly what IRB review, if any, her work received. The research--which involved not only subjects engaged in illegal activity but also minors--began during her undergrad years at Penn. Did the Penn IRB really greenlight this potentially risky work by an undergrad (famous parents or not)? If not, did the Princeton IRB pretend the research had just begun (IRBs having no power to retroactively review research)?

[PaulB]

Ten years ago, Northwestern Law School professor James Lindgren played one of the key roles in unmasking a fraudulent book by Emory professor Michael Bellesiles, Arming America, which argued that private gun ownership was rare during colonial and Revolutionary periods and that wide scale ownership of firearms did not occur until much later. This book was highly praised by (also Northwestern professor) Gary Wills as a powerful antidote to the propaganda of the NRA. The book received the Bancroft Award from the Columbia history department, the highest prize of the profession.

When the book first came under criticism from a non-academic historian, Clayton Cramer, the best and brightest of academic historians closed ranks around Bellesiles. Only when Lindgren joined the fray did it become undeniable that most of the book was a total fabrication. Right now, we are still at the point where the giants of the sociology profession are letting us all know that this is how research is done and that anyone criticizing Goffmann is just trying to avert their eyes from the inequality and racism that permeates American society.

I'm sympathetic to old school's comments above about the role that tenure can play in attacking the powerful in an academic discipline but when the original critics who brought this matter to wider attention including to Lubet feel the need to post their doubts anonymously, it's hard to argue that tenure protects those in a weak position from bullying or blacklisting.

[Newbie]

Yes, please continue. And do not allow the ad hominems of some of Goffman's defenders to deter you. These are serious, serious problems in the field.

I think Duneier is being more cagey than candid, too, and might have crossed a line himself. If he is truly interested in helping verify her claims, he will be forthcoming in answers to questions like: 1. Who among the pseudonyms did he meet? (Did he meet "Chuck" or "Mike"?) 2. Did he ever go with Goffman to "6th street" and see her 4/5 block radius? 3. Which claims made by Goffman were repeated by people he interviewed? 4. Did Goffman ever talk to him about being questioned by both federal and local law enforcement, as she claimed happened?

Some other questions: Can anyone find even a few people in Philadelphia who can attest to being arrested in a maternity ward?

[Appreciative]

It is only thanks to your courage and steadfastness that serious problems in this book and the field are coming to light. Thank you, thank you, thank you for not being cowed by those who have tried to silence your thoughtful criticisms.

[Galois]

A question for Professor Lubet (forgive me, i'm not trained in this area) - isn't it illegal to destroy your hard drive and shred your notes in order to avoid being subpoenaed for them by law enforcement? As I recall, a guy was recently prosecuted for destroying some kind of fish (literally, fish) because that was spoliation or obstruction of justice or something, and the case went all the way to the supreme court. It's not as sexy as conspiracy to murder, but isn't this also a separate crime that AG has openly confessed to committing? There's no academic freedom exception to "spoliating" evidence, right? And then wouldn't Princeton's IRB be culpable, too?

[anon]

The defense of her by fellow sociologists no doubt has something to do with the fact that she is Erving Goffman's daughter

[anon]

Has anyone noted the parallel between this situation and that of Dolezal? It is not even clear that Goffman lived in the neighborhood she - allegedly - studied. And if that is the case then the backbone of the defense of her work collapses as it is largely based on the privilege we ought to accord to a white woman who goes to live in a dangerous black area to engage, Margaret Mead like, in "immersion ethnography."

[Anon]

It should be noted that sociologists are not universally defending OTR or Alice Goffman. There is division, even among ethnographers. Critiques focus on both the ethical and methodological issues in OTR and as well as on her theoretical engagement (or not) with race and marginalization. This division was one of the reasons Goffman was not offered a position at UCLA, where she had a job talk. She may have the support of some faculty, such as Jack Katz, but many are quite critical of her work. Hopefully this growing public scrutiny will improve sociology by shedding light on the need for more transparency.

[Dave Garrow]

Steve, like Jim Lindgren before him some years back, deserves tremendous kudos for his work on this. Katz's behavior reeks of self-interest, given his role in the series that published Goffman's book. The non-availability of a dissertation should be viewed as a serious scandal on the part of Princeton. I hadn't made previously made the "Erving" connection, & it's yet another sad commentary on academia if supposedly "progressive" sociologists give favored treatment to someone based upon who their parents were....

[understudy]

"Which “residents in the neighborhood” could she possibly be talking about? Surely she could not mean the working people, parents of children, block club members, community activists, and young students of the 6th Street community "

Nah, don't you know everyone in 6th street is just a one dimensional stereotype? Thug, victim, pimp, ho? You can tell by comparing the differences in her description in Aisha's neighborhood near Penn (where she did live for most of the 6 years in question) and the 6th street neighborhood scenes, which read like an etended poorly written episode from Homicide or the Wire, where she "lived" at most for 3-6 months.

[Sociologist]

Steve's doing a great job. There's one additional point about the dissertation. Goffman's supervisor, Duneier, stated that "I feel confident in the research that I supervised as an adviser and that our committee approved at Princeton." This sentence, which seems artfully constructed, refers to the dissertation ("that our committee approved at Princeton") and not to the book or to Goffman's research in general. Because we cannot see the dissertation, Duneier's endorsement is effectively meaningless.

[nobody]

Ask Mitchell Duneier for a copy of the diss. He should have it.