Dear members of the SMT Community,

Our Humanities Commons site was created to allow music theorists to share their own work and to make announcements. There are no discussion threads and we do not have the volunteer resources to monitor discussions for relevance and for adherence to our policies on harassment and ethics.

Recently, Humanities Commons instituted a structural change that allows any member of the group to post “updates.” Used improperly, these updates can divert attention away from the new work in music scholarship and new scholarly opportunities that we hope to highlight. We are working on a new set of policies that would govern use of our Humanities Commons site, but, in the meantime, I am simply asking everyone here to refrain from posting “updates” that are more appropriate to a discussion list or social media.

Unfortunately, Humanities Commons has not provided the tools to remove entries from people who post other sorts of messages. All we can do is remove offending people from the group.

And I remind all of our members that even when you ardently disagree with the work of a scholar, name-calling is never appropriate. Scholarly journals provide an outlet to professionally challenge published work. When you submit responses (articles or letters to the editor) to our journals, they are juried by experts and our editors and editorial boards will assure that decorum is maintained.

I also invite non-members to join SMT or consider making a donation to help us fund all the scholarly resources that we provide, both online, in print, and in person. Annual dues start at only $40.

Michael Buchler
President, Society for Music Theory