AUDIO: Stanley Hauerwas quid pro quo harassment
Audio and transcript of Stanley Hauerwas demanding an exchange of favors from a subordinate
The following is a transcript of a November 3, 2016 phone call between Stanley (Martin-)Hauerwas and Logan Martin Isaac, in which Hauerwas demands an exhange of favors, known as quid pro quo harassment. For clarity, I’ve included the emails leading up to the telephone exchange, which took place in Durham, NC, a single party consent state. I am releasing this audio as part of my ecclesiastical request that Hauerwas be removed from the speaker list for the RADVO Conference in Dallas TX September 20–22, 2018.
SMH: Dear Logan:
Amy Laura is teaching a course on war in the divinity school so the posters you put up for your course seem to suggest that I am in competition with her course. I do not want that to happen and would appreciate it if you would take down the posters for the course. I assumed anyway that the students you wanted were primarily undergraduates. I hope you [won’t] take this as a lack of support but I have to live here just as you do.
Stan

LMI: Do you know who took them down or when? It would have been better to have been in communication about this closer to the time I shared the poster with you so we could have strategized rather than done damage control…
- Logan M. Isaac
SMH: Dear Logan:
I do not know who took them down. I do not remember you sharing the poster with me. I was quite surprised when I saw my picture. One way or the other they need to come down.
Stan
SMH picks up phone: Hello?
LMI: Oh hi Stanley, I just saw your email but I didn’t actually open it yet. I just figured a call might be easier.
SMH: Oh, uh, Logan?
LMI: Yes, sorry.
SMH: Yeah, I just said I didn’t take them down and I don’t know who took them down and I don’t remember you sharing them, you sharing the poster with me. I don’t think you did, Logan, because I would have been taken aback by my picture being so prominent on it. But the things need to be taken down.
LMI: Uh, okay. Um…
SMH: Okay.
LMI: Did you see them and didn’t like them, or has somebody asked you about… that they were taken down?
SMH: Um, Amy Laura [Hall] put an email this morning and said she’s doing the war course…
LMI: Uh huh.
SMH: …and I said “I didn’t know that” and this course, it doesn’t have, it isn’t in the Divinity School and I thought it was primarily for undergraduates and she wanted the poster taken down because she thought some students were suggesting that this was in competition with her and that was perfectly appropriate. So we just need to take them down.
LMI: Okay, uh, I sent you an email on October 27th with a picture of the flyers and the only thing I changed, I think, was some of the wording. I know it probably got lost in the shuffle, but, um… Is this a course you’d like to continue being associated with?
SMH: I’m committed to being there two or three times.
LMI: But you’re worried about your picture on it.
SMH: If you dont want me, I’ll be glad not to be there.
LMI: That’s not my concern, I just… it’s difficult, uh, to keep track of how best to not ask too much, but to ask appropriately a scholar who’s written on the subject and whose writings have affected the course material that I’m focusing on. I’m actually focusing on military, soldiers, veterans. Amy Laura has not communicated me, I have not seen a syllabus, it sounds as though she’s dealing in abstractions, the phenomenon of war. It’s also at a different time, and divinity students in particular seem to be interested in the subject.
SMH: Logan, if you want me involved at all, don’t go after the Divinity School students. If some of them find their way in, it’s fine. Okay.
LMI: Um, I don’t know what to say to that.
SMH: Well, I’m sorry Logan, but that’s what I have to tell you. I don’t want to make life in the Divinity School more complex than it already is. And I’m retired, and I do not want to make the life of the new dean [Elaine Heath] any more complicated than it is.
LMI: How would this make the dean’s life more complicated?
SMH: I can’t… Logan, just take what I’ve just said and don’t argue further with me. I’m just telling you what, if you want me involved, is the bottom line.
LMI: Yeah, I understand it’s an ultimatum. Okay, I’ll have to get back to you, um…
SMH: You’re gonna take them down?
LMI: I’m not promising anything.
SMH: Well, if you don’t take them down, you can kiss me goodbye.
LMI: Yes, I understand that, you’ve made that very clear.
SMH: Okay, goodbye.
LMI: Bye.
