Richard M. Waugaman, M.D., longtime member of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, has also been a member of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) for many years. The SAA is is a non-profit professional organization “for the advanced academic study of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, his cultural and theatrical contexts, and the many roles these have played in world culture.” When Katherine Rowe recently became president of the SAA, she sent an email to the membership that stressed, among other things, the SAA’s efforts to be inclusive with respect to various minority groups. She also invited the members to contact the Board with any concerns. Dr. Waugaman responded with the following letter:
Dear Trustees,
I am grateful to Katherine Rowe for her request for feedback. I write as an Oxfordian. Perhaps you see where I am going with this. The SAA is admirably dedicated to inclusiveness and affirmation of many minority groups. Except authorship dissidents.
Not wanting to cause trouble, I would simply ask that you all ponder as individuals if this is consistent with the ideals of the SAA. I realize that if you discuss this as a group, the more vehement defenders of the traditional authorship theory will make others hesitant to disagree. There are English professors who are closet Oxfordians, not wanting to endure the harsh backlash they would face from diehard Stratfordians.
I understand that many leaders of the SAA sincerely believe that authorship heresy is beyond the academic pale, and represents solely unsavory motives of elitism, conspiracy theories, etc. That may have been true at one time. It no longer is.
The fact of the matter is that any objective observer would probably agree that the archival evidence supporting the traditional theory is thin indeed. I understand that committed Stratfordians do not wish to “waste” their time reading the many articles and books presenting strong evidence supporting Oxford’s authorship. Both David Ellis and Kevin Gilvary have published recent books that critique the whole genre of Shakespeare biographies. Ellis even states that they damage the very genre of biography, since they don’t clearly separate fact from inference and speculation.
I hope it will not be too long before academic freedom is extended to us authorship dissidents. Personally, I am dismayed that Lena Orlin [outgoing Executive Director of the SAA, and Professor of English at Georgetown] seems to have persuaded the administration of Georgetown University to chastise me for representing myself as a Shakespeare scholar (though I have written 80 publications on Shakespeare, including for journals such as Notes & Queries, Cahiers Elizabéthains, and many mainstream psychoanalytic journals; I have been a regular reviewer of books on Shakespeare for the Renaissance Quarterly).
Sincerely,
Richard M. Waugaman, M.D.
Dr. Waugaman adds some context for the benefit of SOF members: During the nine years I have been a member of the SAA, I have noticed a deep contradiction between its strong commitment to social justice and respectful treatment of all minorities, on the one hand, and its ongoing tolerance and even encouragement of ridicule of authorship dissidents, Oxfordians especially.
When I suggested that members of the Board ponder my complaint as individuals rather than discuss it as a group, I had in mind my personal interaction with one member of the Board at a Shakespeare conference several years ago. During a break, I saw she had a plate of food but nowhere to sit, so I got up and offered her my seat. She then asked me about my work, and was surprised to learn I am a psychiatrist. As she kept asking questions, I confessed that I’m an Oxfordian. She replied, “Many Oxfordians are mentally ill.”
Now I come to Lena Orlin, my colleague at Georgetown University. She recently stepped down as Executive Director of the SAA. I have interacted with her for several years. In 2012, when I learned about Google Scholar, I was surprised by how few Shakespeare scholars had registered with it; as a result, I was listed sixth among only 80 Shakespeare scholars, in terms of citations of my publications. So I wrote to Lena and suggested she spread the word among SAA members.
In 2014, I asked her about procedures for making an ethics complaint against a fellow member of the SAA. During the week before she replied, that member apologized to me for having compared authorship dissidents with Holocaust deniers. Lena then wrote, “I’m sure he was misinterpreted or over-interpreted; no one should make analogies to the Holocaust lightly.”
Next, the Oxfrauds [anti-Oxfordian group] entered the picture. Their website included several comments about my being listed as one of six “Faculty Experts for Media Contacts” about Shakespeare at Georgetown. This naturally interfered with their efforts to minimize the presence in academics of Oxfordians. Supposedly, any faculty member could offer to be listed as a faculty expert (although it took a year before Georgetown accepted my offer). There were comments on Oxfraud’s Facebook page that Georgetown was bound to discipline me for my authorship dissent.
I can only speculate that one of them contacted Lena Orlin to complain about me. In May 2015 she emailed me to complain that I claimed to have written two-thirds of the Georgetown faculty’s most recent 50 publications on Shakespeare. She said she reported me to Georgetown’s Assistant Provost.
I replied that I was simply reporting what was on Georgetown’s website. She said it was wrong to cite this information, since some faculty publications were not included, and my book reviews that were listed should not count. I replied that more than 20 of my publications on Shakespeare weren’t listed either.
Lena objected to my referring to the Stratfordian “theory” as such. She complained, “[It] is known to be historical fact. I do not believe that it is in your power to redistribute the burden of proof in this matter. In other words, the burden of proof remains with you, not with those who follow four centuries of history, research, and scholarship.” She ended by saying she was “unable to take up further correspondence on authorship matters. I am hard at work on my biography of Shakespeare.” I replied by reminding her of David Ellis’s critique of Shakespeare biographies as being so speculative that they damage the credibility of all biographies.
In the fall of 2017, Georgetown’s list of the most recent 50 faculty publications on all topics suddenly disappeared, and I was unable to learn why. Lists of faculty experts for media contacts also disappeared. But I was then asked to set up a conference call with the Assistant Dean of Georgetown’s medical school, and the Chair of the Psychiatry Department, for which I had done volunteer teaching for 40 years. They formally asked me not to represent myself as a Shakespeare scholar, but to say Shakespeare is my “hobby.” I was told this decision was made by the Georgetown administration. But my efforts to appeal this decision were stonewalled.
Ironically, in 2011 the Chair of Georgetown’s English Department was friendly toward my research on Shakespeare. I wrote to her that a newspaper declined to mention my work on Shakespeare in my daughter’s wedding announcement, on the grounds that I lacked an academic appointment in literature. The Chair replied, “That’s a ludicrous reason for refusing to include your interest in Shakespeare. . . . I have no objection (indeed, would be pleased) to offer some sort of courtesy affiliation [in the English Department].” The Chair was not a Shakespeare specialist, but seemed to support academic freedom.
Editor’s Note: According to the Shakespeare Association of America’s website, membership is “open to all Shakespeare scholars and to any other persons to whom the study of Shakespeare is important.” That description would fit SOF members as well. The more Oxfordians join the SAA, the more we can collectively push back against efforts to marginalize doubters and to dismiss the Oxfordian authorship view with ad hominem attacks. You can view Dr. Waugaman’s talk at the SOF 2017 conference, “An Oxfreudian in Academia: Reflections on Entering the Mainstream,” here:
