Professor Timothy L. Jackson Wins $725,000 Settlement

          Facing the Music

   Professor Jackson will receive $725,000 from the University of North Texas. Five years ago he was accused of being a racist by some of his fellow faculty members and students at the UNT. Jackson was removed as editor of  the journal he produced at North Texas and its publication suspended. He will now continue to teach there, and  have his course load reduced and resume his editorship of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and have a half-time Research Assistant to support the journal and receive the $725,000. Not bad. In addition, someone suggests that “We all owe Professor Jackson thanks for showing universities what will happen if they give in to woke mobs.”
   You likely are reading this post because of the mention of $725,000. It is highly unlikely that you read my earlier post, The Journal of Schenkerian Studies.  In it you will find a full account of the situation which led to the lawsuit, so you can have a look at that post for additional background.
   When I wrote it, the case was not settled and Professor Jackson did not yet have his own Wikipedia page which he now does. If you click on, Timothy L. Jackson, and go directly to the section, "Journal of Schenkerian Studies issue 12", you can avoid my longer account and feel more confident about the information provided.
  And, here is some CANCON, you will learn from the Wikipedia entry that Jackson was born in Ottawa and went to McGill!
 Sources:
      You are unlikely to need more, other than those already provided. If you do, you will find additional articles about the subject since many were written after the settlement in July, 2025. A sample is provided below and it is the source for the photo above. Professor Jackson also was able to keep his library privileges.

 "University Music Theory Professor Wins $725,000 in Settlement," Josh Guab, North Texas Daily, July 25, 2025.

   "Timothy Jackson, a 66-year-old distinguished university music theory research professor, continues to teach after settling a five-year-long lawsuit against the university and facing backlash over a controversial article....
 Jackson wrote an article about the controversy surrounding the historical Jewish music theorist, Heinrich Schenker, in which he compared Schenker’s work to that of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein in the field of classical music theory. 

   Jackson’s lawsuit began in 2020 after Philip Ewell, a music theorist at Hunter College, labeled Schenker as a lead influencer in the “white racial frame” of music theory. The professor included Schenkerian scholars as contributors to the “racist” framework. In response, Jackson defended Schenker in an article in the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and received national backlash from music theorists and students. 

   In Jackson’s response, he said Ewell’s claim “scapegoats Schenker and Schenkerians and paucity of African Americans” in music theory and was anti-Semitic. In the article, his argument focused on Schenker being Jewish and Schenker's predominantly Jewish student base being anti-Nazi and warned of academic ideological justification for a second Holocaust of Israeli Jews. 

  “All but one of my doctoral students dropped studying with me,” Jackson said. “In some ways, I really don’t blame them because they felt that they would be tainted by me.”

   University graduate students and faculty endorsed a statement that called to dissolve the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and apologized for Jackson’s “racist attacks.” Jackson said the university decided to close the journal, which was the primary incentive of the Center of Schenkerian Studies. Jackson said the journal’s elimination caused the center to close. 

“One of the things about this cancel culture that really, really hurt me and upset me was that I’ve always treated students with love and kindness,” Jackson said. “I was shocked and still am to this day, about how some students behaved towards me.”

   Jackson sued the university after the Journal of Schenkerian Studies closed. The university settled in early July, paying Jackson $725,000 on counts of defamation and violating his freedom of speech. 

   According to the Denton Record-Chronicle, $400,000 will be allocated to Jackson, and the remaining $325,000 will cover the initial legal fees in the case. The agreement stated the university was not admitting any fault by settling and Jackson must drop his first amendment and defamation claims against colleagues and the administration. 

   “The agreement ensures that journals published by the UNT Press, including the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, will apply the academic rigor and ethical practices expected of peer-reviewed journals within top-tier research universities,” Kelley Reese, the senior associate vice president of University Brand Strategy and Communications, said in an email to the North Texas Daily.

   Michael Lively, a music theory senior lecturer at SMU and Jackson’s former student, said people observed correctly that Schenker made racist comments, but the university dealt with the situation wrongfully. 

   “Under the interests of intellectual freedom, scholars are supposed to be able to express a wide range of ideas,” Lively said. “If other scholars disagree with them, then they should do that through the normal process of debate and discussion, instead of the sort of condemnation and ad hominem attacks, which were unfortunately part of the controversy.”

   Jackson said he will continue teaching at the university because he wants to rebuild the Center of Schenkerian Studies and teach students not what to think, but how to think. 

    “We need to be teaching students at UNT and all across this country to look at problems dialectically, how to argue one position in a different position,” Jackson said. “We’ll never get the absolute truth, but we’ll get closer and closer, like an asymptote of the truth by just persisting in this dialectical thinking.”

   Lively wrote a research article that suggests renaming Schenkerian Analysis instead of disregarding Schenker’s contributions, which will be published in the Music Theory Spectrum journal in 2027. He wants to rename the discipline to Katzian Analytical Theory, after Adele T. Katz, an early female Schenkerian theorist. Lively said this values diverse scholarly perspectives. 

   On July 9, the Columbia Academic Freedom Council recognized Jackson in his fight to affirm academic freedom and viewpoint diversity with the Columbia University Academic Freedom Prize. 

   “Academia is in a very difficult place right now in the country and it was important for me to fight the battle that I fought,” Jackson said. “I’m glad this very distinguished group of scholars has deemed that I should be among the first recipients of this award.”

   Jackson also founded the Lost Composers and Theorists Project in the Center of Schenkerian Studies during his 28 years of being a tenured professor. The project recovers music and research from composers who concealed their work during World War II under the Nazi regime. One recovered piece was performed by late university professor, Joseph Banowetz, who was Grammy-nominated in 2011. 

The Lost Composers and Theorists Project had 10 composers, including Schenker and Reinhard Oppel, a friend and colleague of Schenker. Jackson introduced Oppel’s work with help from his son, Kurt Oppel. Jackson said he lost contact after the controversy and is trying to reconnect with the Oppel family without success and the family was “profoundly dismayed by UNT’s behavior.” 

   “We’re in a situation where academic freedom has basically been thrown out the window because people are routinely threatened by extremists on both sides of the political perspective,” Lively said."

The Journal of Schenkerian Studies

 Little Journal ----Large Issues

   I have devoted several posts to the subject of journals which are basically about one person. That person is usually an author, but in this case the periodical is about the Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker who was also an author. The number of subscribers to it is much smaller than the number of words in this post which I hope to keep very short.
   I should, because I know even less about classical music than I do about a very large number of other subjects about which I know little. Plus, I can't read music or German and the title of this journal scares me as much as the word "calculus." I understand enough, however, to know that even a little magazine can get into big trouble, if it is located on a campus and the subject of race arises.
   The Journal of Schenkerian Studies is published at the Center for Schenkerian Studies at the University of North Texas. The Center is headed by Professor Timothy Jackson, a tenured professor of music theory. 
    Across the country at Hunter College there is a Professor Ewell, also a music professor, but a Black one, a colour that should be mentioned in this case. In 2019, he travelled to Columbus and addressed the Society for Music Theory. The title of the talk was "Music Theory's White Racial Frame" and apparently one doesn't have to know much about music theory to understand the major points made, that Schenker was a racist, a fact ignored by the Schenkerians, and that, to put it bluntly, classical music was too white.  Apparently he received a standing ovation, which is a rather rare thing at an academic conference. 
   This news reached Texas and it is fair to say Professor Jackson did not agree. He then did what should be done when such academic arguments develop -- issue a call for papers to debate the issue. Articles discussing the Ewell arguments were returned and published in The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. Some agreed with Professor Ewell and some did not. Professor Jackson did not. Apart from the Black/white arguments, there were some into which anti-semitism was injected to further complicate the attempt at discourse.(Schenker, who was Jewish, died in 1935 and his wife died ten years later in Theresienstadt.)
   The news generated about this polemical essay in a very small academic periodical, was considerable. It came to the attention of the graduate students in Texas as did the word "race" and, probably without reading the papers, many decided that even a tenured professor should be fired it he was a racist. Others piled on and there was a demand that he be terminated.
   Naturally the news was a nuisance for those in the administrative  wing at North Texas and, not surprisingly, Professor Jackson was removed as editor and generally ostracized from departmental matters. 
   Once again, Professor Jackson did not agree, feeling perhaps that he had been treated shoddily, and sued the UNT regents and others who had defamed him and violated his right to speak freely. The regents appealed, but a Texas Court of Appeals ruled in favour of Professor Jackson and the litigation continues. 
   To keep this short, this episode can be characterized simply as another cannon shot at another canon that is a construct of a different group of DWEMS - DWEMusicians. It illustrates that even a little academic single author journal with limited circulation can have a big impact. 

Sources: 
   For most, all of the information you will want can be found freely in the Wikipedia entries for Heinrich Schenker or the one for The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. To visit the scene of the crime, go to the UNT School of Music and the Division of Music History, Theory and Ethnomusicology where the Journal of Schenkerian Studies still exists, apparently in a suspended state.
   If you are willing to pay, start here: "Obscure Musicology Journal Sparks Battles Over Race and Free Speech: A scholar’s address about racism and music theory was met with a vituperative, personal response by a small journal. It faced calls to cease publishing," Michael Powell, NYT, Feb. 14, 2021. 
"A periodical devoted to the study of a long-dead European music theorist is an unlikely suspect to spark an explosive battle over race and free speech."

The Bonus: 
Professor Ewell's views are expressed in his recently published book which is available up at Western in the Music Library. Here is a description:
On Music Theory: And Making Music More Welcoming For Everyone.
"Since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, American music theory has been framed and taught almost exclusively by white men. As a result, whiteness and maleness are woven into the fabric of the field, and BIPOC music theorists face enormous hurdles due to their racial identities. In On Music Theory, Philip Ewell brings together autobiography, music theory and history, and theory and history of race in the United States to offer a black perspective on the state of music theory and to confront the field's white supremacist roots. Over the course of the book, Ewell undertakes a textbook analysis to unpack the mythologies of whiteness and western-ness with respect to music theory, and gives, for the first time, his perspective on the controversy surrounding the publication of volume 12 of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. He speaks directly about the antiblackness of music theory and the antisemitism of classical music writ large and concludes by offering suggestions about how we move forward. Taking an explicitly antiracist approach to music theory, with this book Ewell begins to create a space in which those who have been marginalized in music theory can thrive." -- Back cover.