U. of North Texas Pays Prof. Timothy Jackson $725,000 for Defaming Him

University of North Texas music theory professor Timothy Jackson in 2011. LM Otero/AP file photo

Timothy Jackson is a professor of music theory at the University of North Texas who specializes in Schenkerian analysis, one of the standard methods for analyzing classical music. In fact, he was founder of The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. In 2020, after publishing a special issue of the journal with essays responding to accusations that Schenker and his method were racist, Jackson was accused of being a racist himself and the university took the journal away from him. He sued, and in 2025 the suit was settled by the university giving him back his journal plus $725,000 cash. What a victory for academic freedom! But what a long road to justice. We all owe Professor Jackson thanks for showing universities what will happen if they give in to woke mobs.¹

Heinrich Schenker and Philip Ewell

The story began when a music scholar named Philip Ewell delivered a plenary talk (later published) at the Society for Music Theory conference, in which he denounced music theorist Heinrich Schenker, as “a virulent racist” and “a German nationalist”.² Ewell did not mention that Schenker was not German, but rather was an Austrian Jew whose wife died in a Nazi concentration camp (though Schenker himself died in 1935). Towards the end of his life, Schenker said,

“Music is accessible to all races and creeds alike. He who masters such progressions in a creative sense, or learns to master them, produces art which is genuine and great.”

Ewell disagreed. In particular, he thought that Schenkerian analysis was not accessible to all races and creeds. It is a tool of racism.

“I argue that Schenkerian theory is an institutionalized racial structure — a crucial part of music theory’s white racial frame — that exists to benefit members of the dominant white race of music theory.”

Moreover,

“There can be no question that white persons hold the power in music theory — music theory’s white racial frame entrenches and institutionalizes that power.”

Professor Timothy Jackson, the Jewish editor of The Journal of Schenkerian Analysis, didn’t think his life’s work was inherently racist. He organized a special issue of the journal to discuss Ewell’s allegations, quite an honor for Ewell even though ten of the fifteen essays were negative.³ Jackson himself contributed “A Preliminary Response to Ewell,” in which he granted that Schenker was “a typical German racist” but,

Although Schenker did not lack self-assurance, he did pivot very significantly from a typical German racist to an egalitarian viewpoint, and from a staunch German patriot who hated everything English and American, to one who saw new hope for Schenkerian analysis in America.

Jackson accused Ewell of anti-semitism:

“Ewell’s scapegoating of Schenker, Schenkerians, and Schenkerian analysis, occurs in the much larger context of Black-on-Jew attacks in the United States. . . . Ewell’s denunciation of Schenker and Schenkerians may be seen as part and parcel of the much broader current of Black anti-Semitism.”

This caught my attention because I met my wife at a lecture on Schenkerian analysis. She tried to explain it to me, but I remain ignorant. Nonetheless, I do know something about cancellings, since I’ve been the target of them twice,in 2003 and in 2019. Jackson’s was typical: mistreatment by his Administration, cowardice and betrayal by his colleagues, petitions for him to be fired. On July 29, 2020— only five days after the symposium was published— the Executive Board of the Society for Music Theory issued a letter condemning it:

The conception and execution of this symposium failed to meet the ethical, professional, and scholarly standards of our discipline. Some contributions violate our Society’s policies on harassment and ethics.

The journal’s advisory board did not subject submissions to the normal processes of peer review, published an anonymously authored contribution, and did not invite Ewell to respond in a symposium of essays that discussed his own work. Such behaviors are silencing, designed to exclude and to replicate a culture of whiteness. These are examples of professional misconduct, which in this case enables overtly racist behavior. We humbly acknowledge that we have much work to do to dismantle the whiteness and systemic racism that deeply shape our discipline

The Executive Board did not bother to check whether what they said was true. In fact, Ewell, like all members of the Society for Music Theory, received an invitation to contribute an essay. It is also quite normal for academic journals to publish opinion pieces without peer review, and the fact that one contributor was allowed to remain anonymous is irrelevant: it is the ideas that matter, not who the author is.⁴

The members of the Society for Music Theory thought the Executive Board was letting Professor Jackson off too easy. Over 900 of them signed a statement which demanded that the Society admit its own racism (and that of its members, presumably) but expel Jackson as an especially bad racist:

that SMT acknowledges the following three points: (a) that American music theory is historically rooted in white supremacy, the racist idea that whites are superior to nonwhites, (b) that these white supremacist roots have resulted in racist policies that have benefitted whites and whiteness while disadvantaging nonwhites and nonwhiteness, and (c) that these racist policies have resulted in injustices suffered by BIPOC at all stages of their careers.

and

A censure of the advisory board of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, pursuant to relevant portions of the SMT Mission Statement, Policy on Ethics, and Policy on Harassment, as the Society’s policies have no meaning if violations do not invite censure. In particular, the Policy on Harassment states that “cases of proven offenses” will result in “revocation of membership and honors.”⁵

Neither of the two letters demanded that Professor Jackson be fired, but the music students of the University of North Texas did, saying firing him was necessary to make the department more inclusive and less toxic.

This should also extend to investigating past bigoted behaviors by faculty and, by taking this into account, the discipline and potential removal of faculty who used the JSS platform to promote racism. Specifically, the actions of Dr. Jackson— both past and present— are particularly racist and unacceptable.

We will strive to change the toxic culture at UNT. We recognize that this will be difficult work, and we are prepared to fight for inclusivity now and in the future.

The professors followed the lead of their students. Professor Jackson had 23 colleagues in the Division of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology, 17 of which signed a letter that indicated their agreement with the graduate students. The signers even included people who had personally helped organize the symposium but wanted to show that they were sorry about what they’d done.⁶ I won’t quote again, since these letters get somewhat tiresome.

No doubt much of the piling on was due more to cowardice than to malice. Jackson quotes a confession of this in his complaint.

Hey I’m writing this email anonymously I registered a new email for this. I’m sorry I signed that letter [i.e. the SMT petition] too. I resisted signing it but my advisor is super involved in this (one of the most active people) and everyday he checks that letter to look for people he knows. My name is among one of the last ones. I saw that pretty much everyone signed, so for a moment there I thought “he’s got tenure but I still need to build a career” I’m sorry I been feeling like a coward since I signed I’m so weak and I owe you one. I’ll remember that I owe you one and I’ll make it up to you some day.

A few more things: Even last year at SMT I didn’t agree with prof Ewell’s plenary but I ended up standing up and clapping anyway. When you’re in the middle of a standing ovation it’s kind of hard to remain seated, especially when you’re surrounded by people who know you... I did resist the standing ovation for as long as I could and was probably the last person who stood. Even then people looked at Me all mean. Just saying I do despise myself but not as much as I despise the dozens of people who were involved in the making of the journal but later posted on the internet and blamed it ALL on you. “Jackson made me do it” says the editor the vice editor the authors ... all these people! who are you, the president? Did you kidnap their families? It’s ridiculous.

The University of North Texas didn’t fire Professor Jackson, but it did take away his journal. Instead of working through ordinary procedures and existing faculty disciplinary committees, the Administration carefully chose a handful of professions to form a special “Ad Hoc Panel”. A student editorial assistant who’d worked on the Symposium, a PhD student who’d asked Professor Jackson to be his thesis advisor four months before, suddenly changed from being a Jackson fan to being Jackson’s chief foe. He went to the department chair to denounce Jackson and claim he’d been coerced into helping with the symposium. Jackson knew of many emails to the contrary that the student had written, but the University didn’t allow him to use the emails to defend himself. They said the emails from the student to Jackson were confidential educational records protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). In the end, the Administration accused Jackson of the same supposed unethical practices the Society for Music Theory had alleged, and removed him from the journal he founded.

Jackson contacted three lawyers with national reputations— Michael Allen, Samantha Harris, and Jonathan Mitchell— and filed a lawsuit in federal court against the University and a crowd of individuals, alleging defamation and violation of the 1st Amendment. The University’s motion to dismiss was rejected (Jackson v. Wright, No. 4:21-CV-00033 (E.D. Texas, January 18, 2022)) as was its appeal of that dismissal to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (Jackson v. Wright No. 22-40059 (5th Cir. Sept. 15, 2023); the University frivolously claimed sovereign immunity). The case moved on, with Jackson filing a motion for summary judgment, a motion that the judge should award him victory because the University had agreed to so many damning facts that there was nothing left to argue about at trial. Facing defeat, in 2025, the parties settled. The University of North Texas agreed to pay $725,000 on behalf of all the defendants, and agreed to give back control of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies to Professor Jackson.

Conclusion

Thus, Professor Jackson is vindicated. I’m surprised the settlement was for so much money. The University of North Texas must have been sure it would lose on summary judgment or at trial. I wish the individual defendants had been made to pay too, but at least the publicity of the case has revealed their bigotry, cowardice, and treachery to the whole world.

What of the broader issue of academic freedom and the power of the mob? Stanley Barnes says the affair was a victory for the radical left because it showed their power to punish those who tried using polite argument against their strategy of name-calling, redefinition, threats, and appeals to emotion. Barnes says,

To “invite people into conversations properly,” Philip Ewell describes the type of debate, or conversation, he wishes to have. The conversation will be “adult”, it will be “difficult”, and the person will have to “sit with discomfort.” The conversation will be on Ewell’s own “playing field,” and it will not be about a particular piece of music, but about race and exclusion, the impact of a racialized system, about the composers who were shunted to the side, and about legacies of injustice, so that the subject may begin self-reflecting.

The JSS authors were victims of a powerful Critical Theory method known as destabilization: deliberately throwing people, groups, or institutions into imbalance and confusion, by introducing ideas that cause sudden and dramatic disagreement and conflict; then, weaponizing the response through public denouncement. . . .

The JSS authors fell into a trap that should be studied so as not to be repeated: Critical Theorists appear to invite dialectic where consensus may be formed through reason and argument, with common rules of order, as in classic liberalism and democratic systems. The JSS contributors wrote of the “exchange of ideas”, the value of a “variety of thoughts and perspectives”, “informed debate,” as so on.

But Critical Theory seeks nothing of the sort . . . Critical Race Theorists arrive to any conversation with pervasive systemic racism operating as a belief, not as a topic on the table for debate . . . Ultimately, any debate against Critical Race Theory is therefore a debate over either the existence or the extent of this basic premise. Such debates are typically reframed as themselves exemplary of systemic racism.

As Benjamin Hett says in summary of Peter Drucker,

. . . doctrines had evolved in a general climate of loss of belief— not only in capitalism, but in socialism as well. Since there were no positive answers to any social problems, [they] could only be against everything, even against inconsistent things: it was antiliberal and anticonservative, antireligious and anti-atheist, anticapitalist and antisocialist, and most of all antisemitic. In a particularly sharp observation, he noted that [the movement] had succeeded not because people believed its messages, but in spite of the fact that they did not.⁷

Barnes and Drucker may be right. But I hope, with Timothy Jackson, that the affair has kept alive the idea that bad ideas should be met with argument rather than force, and has shown that those brave scholars who use argument can take everything the irrationalists throw at them and come out happy. Let me give Jackson the last word. He says,

“I think that the most important thing for universities to teach is not what to think, but how to think. ... Part of that process is what I call dialectics, which goes back to the Greeks. To Plato, to dialogues,” Jackson said. “And I called the symposium in the journal a symposium precisely for that reason, because we published both pro- and anti-Ewell statements. And we wanted to leave it to the readers to decide what they felt was valid criticism and what they didn’t agree with. In other words, it was a dialectical exercise. And a both-sides type of exercise, if you will.”

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Footnotes

1. The compromise and mutual release agreement (the settlement contract) is public. Of the $725,000, $325,000 will go to legal fees and other expenses, according to Prof. Volokh. Jackson’s lawyer is Michael Allen, a well-known academic freedom law specialist, assisted by Jonathan Mitchell, former Solicitor-General of Texas. Allen is at m.allen@allen-lawfirm.com. Jackson is at shermanzelechin@gmail.com. The University was represented by Beth Ellen Klusmann, 512-936-1914, and Lanora Christine Pettit, 512-936-1700.

For more information, see

• https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67124904/jackson-v-wright/

• “$725K Settlement in University of North Texas Academic Freedom Case,” Eugene Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy (July 8, 2025).

• “UNT professor awarded $725,000 in settlement against university: Five years after accusations, the university has settled a hard-fought conflict over academic freedom and free speech,” Denton Record-Chronicle, Lucinda Breeding-Gonzales (July 11, 2025).

• A long article in The New York Times.

• Jackson’s legal complaint in federal court, and the full 300+ page complaint with exhibits A through V.

• “Music professor sues university for punishing him over defense of ‘racist’ composer,” The College Fix, Greg Piper (January 22, 2021).

• “The Attack on Timothy Jackson Is an Assault on Liberal Education,” Quillette, Bruno Chaouat (9 Feb 2021).

• “Classical Music’s Suicide Pact” (Part 1 and Part 2) City Journal, Heather Mac Donald (Summer 2021).

• “University Sued for Violating Music Prof’s Free Speech,” RealClearEducation, Thomas K. Lindsay (March 31, 2021).

2. On Professor Ewell and the impact of Critical Theory on music theory generally, see “4. Deer Whiteness and Maleness: Being Part 4 of Philip Ewell Go Down In History,” Stanley L. Barnes, Molto Doloroso (August 2, 2023). He says,

To identify a single original idea in Ewell’s work is really quite difficult. Far from being “pathbreaking”, “brave” or “bold,” as has been said by various writers in praise of his recent book, Ewell can be said to have done little more than take work others have done, prewritten almost word-for-word, and added to it music theory. The academic rush to respond to the JSS affair, and its media aftermath, distracted from the main outcome, which was that it elevated Philip Ewell to international visibility in academic music, without his having made a single actual contribution.

3. For a humorous summary of the fifteen articles and how they advanced Ewell’s career, see “That Scared the S— Out of Them: A New Narrative, Being Part 2 of Philip Ewell Go Down In History,” Molto Doloroso, Stanley L. Barnes (April 24, 2023).

4. I wonder whether the Society for Music Theory and the signatories to its letter might also be liable for defamation. The Society probably has few assets, but wouldn’t it be delicious if Professor Jackson were to become its owner after it couldn’t pay the judgment?

5. The music department of Yale University decided they needed to publish their own statement:

We believe that the execution of the “Symposium on Philip Ewell’s 2019 SMT Plenary Paper” serves only to exemplify Prof. Ewell’s observations that “the white racial frame seeks to shield Schenker from unwanted criticism” and that “the most important function of the white racial frame is to keep the system as it is,” and in so doing, the Journal of Schenkerian Studies failed to meet the scholarly and ethical standards that we expect of our discipline.

6. The backstabbing colleagues of Professor Jackson who signed the letter, cursed be their names, are Ellen Bakulina, Assistant Professor; Andrew Chung, Assistant Professor; Diego Cubero, Assistant Professor, Music Theory; Steven Friedson, University Distinguished Research Professor; Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden, Assistant Professor; Benjamin Graf, Senior Lecturer; Frank Heidlberger, Professor; Bernardo Illari, Associate Professor; Justin Lavacek, Assistant Professor; Peter Mondelli, Associate Professor; Margaret Notley, Professor; April L. Prince, Principal Lecturer; Cathy Ragland, Associate Professor; Gillian Robertson, Senior Lecturer; Hendrik Schulze, Associate Professor; Vivek Virani, Assistant Professor; and Brian F. Wright, Assistant Professor.

The signatories in italics are assistant professors or lecturers, teachers who lack tenure. It was completely inappropriate for the senior faculty, who will be voting on whether to keep or to fire the juniors, to ask them to participate in high-stakes senior department politics. Their signatures are probably the result of fear.

The complaint says which of the signatories above helped work on the symposium:

The JSS editorial staff drafted the call for papers inclusively, drawing upon all of the following faculty at UNT, Drs. Ellen Bakulina, Diego Cubero, Andrew Chung, Stephen Slottow, Benjamin Graf, Levi Walls, and myself. With the exception of Professor Slottow, all of these individuals later signed some form of the petitions calling for my cancellation, the demise of the JSS, and the end of the Center.

7. Benjamin Hett, The Death of Democracy (2018), summarizing Peter Drucker, The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism (1939). Drucker is of course talking about the Nazis of a century ago, not the Communists of today, but as Marx said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy and again as farce”. (More precisely in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, “Hegel says somewhere that that great historic facts and personages recur twice. He forgot to add: “Once as tragedy, and again as farce.”)