WRITING
Go ahead, choose your nom de guerre
It’s time for engaged-scholars to consider the protections of anonymity
For those waging wars of words during this shocking period, is it time to choose a nom de guerre or at least a nom de plume? Polly Baker, Boz, and Madame Restell surely would have.
They’d have seen the front of attacks on universities creeping closer and closer. Can the engaged-scholar be far from view of those on the move? And, could a well-chosen pen name provide the veil needed to keep on writing?
The most famous “Anonymous” writer from the first Trump-era turned out to be Miles Taylor, an official at the Department of Homeland Security at the time.
His September 2018 op-ed in the New York Times, “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration”, detailed the organized opposition to Trump within his own administration. Taylor hadn’t just witnessed this; he was an active participant.
The Times editors explained that the author’s job would be “jeopardized” if his name was disclosed. Given his area of expertise, that might have been the least of his concerns. After Taylor left the administration for a job outside of government, he waived the confidentiality agreement he’d worked out with the paper — his job, if not his writing, now safe.
Taylor is hardly the first to weigh the risks of including a real name in the newspaper of record. Way back in 1894, that same paper wrote about the public’s fascination with authors choosing an alternate professional name.
“Among the ‘curiosities of literature,’ none, perhaps, is more interesting than the aegis of the author behind which he wages his war of words — the nom de guerre, with its caprices, its varieties, and frequently the reasons for its choice.”
In “History of Some Famous Noms de Guerre”, the Times claimed it was the hope of many women writers — like Marion Evans who famously wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot — to have their “works judged with the stern impartiality of the most masculine of critical canons.”
It’s obviously the case one hundred years later that the most vulnerable writers, including many women, but far too many others as well, continue to consider the wisdom of sharing their views in public with their own name attached. Every scholar in the US on one type of visa or another or studying some newly forbidden topic is all too aware of what’s going on.
For the engaged-scholar, whether employed by a university or elsewhere, not using ones official name is likely unimaginable.
The entire system of academic advancement hangs on associating an idea, article, or patent to an identifiable person. Blind review, whether in journal publishing or tenure dossier judging, is a rare case where anonymity is the norm; nearly everywhere else, the path to academic success runs through public recognition. Just ask anyone who’s changed their name how complicated it is to succeed in this environment.
An anonymous academic life is a strange thing to consider, but the other options right now are much worse for so many. Nearly 300 foreign students have already had their visas cancelled for no good reason. Others have been targeted for expressing their political views. These are different times; many now unconvinced by the assurances that everything will be alright.
On C-SPAN a couple of years ago, Professor Colleen Sheehan from Arizona State University explained the reasons why the country’s most famous anonymous authors chose to remain private.
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, of course, wrote many of the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym Publius, the name of one of the founders the Roman Republic. The secret of their identity remained long after the adoption of the constitution, except we learn from George Washington, who they let in on the deception.
Federalist #40 provided one of the reasons, according to Sheehan. Publius wrote: “The prudent inquiry, in all cases, ought surely to be, not so much FROM WHOM the advice comes, as whether the advice be GOOD.”
Nearly 250 years later, this is advice to re-consider.
The insights of scholars in all fields, whether it is in public health, philosophy, or computer science, remain integral to a future any of us desire. If those insights are written anonymously or by Anthony Afterwit, Yulia Payevska, or Isaac Smith, they should be judged based on their quality, not the author’s name or absence of one.
So, keep yourself safe, choose your pen name; there’re are a dozen sites to help you do it: https://blog.reedsy.com/pen-name-generator/. And, if you read something by Brigham Page, assess its merits based on what it says, not how I chose that name.
