Following Schwyzer’s recent melt-down, there has been a lot of focus on him on this site and others. I think this is mis-placed. Clearly this man (people are now talking of him in the past tense) was umbalanced whether or not what he said was true. If most of it is true, his behavior shows him to be chronically and seriously ill; if most of it is not true, he is a pathological liar.

The question we should be asking is how someone so patently un-qualified to hold a tenured professorship should be able to attain that position. Why did Stony Brook College allow him on to its teaching staff at all? Is this not evidence of systematic discrimination in college appointments in favour of those with a feminist position and against those who do not support this position? Everything would seem to suggest that Stony Brook College is not interested in providing an educational service but only driving a twisted political agenda.

Schwyzer has proved beyond all doubt that the academic feminism is a fraud. Feminists who claim to be “intelligent and educated” because they have a PhD in women’s studies can be crushed with the statement that education and intelligence is not required to get such a bit of paper anymore than Hugo Schwyzer needed these things to get tenured professorship in the same field.

Additionally Schwyzer, having now admitted his entire career was a fraud, has paved the way for any former students to sue Stony Brook College for failing to provide the services that should be expected from such an institution (class action anyone? Geddit?)

Where does this leave the likes of Michael Kimmel? Surely he knew Schwyzer was a fraud and mentally ill – this was manifestly clear from the material he posted on the Internet – and yet he apparently did nothing. Was he on the committee that awarded tenure to Schwyzer? If so, he is implicated in Schwyzer’s fraud and his reputation should take a knock almost as big as Schwyzer’s.

We should stop attacking Hugo, his reputation is now finished and it will be difficult to imagine anyone signing up for any of his courses or taking him seriously at all ever again. Instead we should focus on the college itself and everyone else implicated by this debacle.

Unless of course Mr Schwyzer planned all this from the start in order to expose the whole world of feminist academia for the fraud it is; a fraud in which committing serious crimes like attempted murder, being addicted to drugs and not being qualified in any sense of the word do not disbar one from holding tenure in women's studies. Which I suspect he did. And in which case he is a genius.