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[Syriel]

These are just a handful of quotes, but the full article talks about how perceived "discomfort" is sanitizing the college experience, in part because colleges are being run more and more like businesses rather than institutions of learning where students are expected to have their views challenged.

Last fall, David Samuel Levinson, the author, most recently, of the literary thriller Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence, taught a course called “Introduction to Fiction” at Emory University, part of a two-year fellowship he’d been awarded there. Blunt and scabrous, he prides himself on being frank with his students. “My class is like a truth-telling, soothsaying class, and I tell them no one is going to talk to you like this, you will never have another class like this,” he says.

One student, he says, a freshman woman, sat besides him throughout the course, actively participating. At the end of the semester, he gave her a B+, because, although she worked hard, her writing wasn’t great. “They don’t really understand that they can do all of the work, and turn in perfectly typed up, typo-free papers and stories, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to get an A, because quality matters, talent matters,” he says.

The student, he learned, was threatening to bring him up on sexual harassment charges. “Oh, I felt unsafe,” he whines, imitating her. The director, he says, told him, “I know this is bullshit, you know this is total bullshit, since you’re gay, [but] you really don’t want to deal with this bullshit. Just give her the grade.” Asked about this, the director says, “I don’t recall that, but I do recall advising him that as with all faculty, per our policy, that this was up to his discretion and thus his decision to make.”

Recently, there’s been much discussion of what some say is a growing intellectual chill and sexual panic on campus. In the latest example, on June 19, Teresa Buchanan, a tenured associate professor of education at Louisiana State University, was fired from the school where she’d taught for twenty years for using off-color language. Her alleged offenses included saying, in class, “fuck no” and making a joke about sex declining in long-term relationships, as well as using the word “pussy” in an off-campus conversation with a teacher. Reached by phone, she says she had no memory of saying “pussy” to anyone, but said that, if she did, it likely would have been in a conversation about how teachers must learn to handle irate parents. “If a parent is very angry and says, ‘You need to do a better job, you little pussy,” you need to know how to react. I wasn’t calling anybody that word.”

Buchanan’s firing follows the investigation of Laura Kipnis, a feminist film professor at Northwestern. Kipnis was famously brought up on charges under Title IX—the federal law banning sexual discrimination in education— as a result of an essay she wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe.” “These are anxious times for officialdom, and students, too, are increasingly afflicted with the condition—after all, anxiety is contagious,” Kipnis wrote in that piece, which took issue with the current campus obsession with student vulnerability.

She didn’t know the half of it. In her essay, Kipnis discussed widely reported accusations of sexual assault by two students against Northwestern philosophy professor Peter Ludlow, which has resulted in numerous lawsuits. One of the students, as well as another who had nothing to do with the case but said she was acting on behalf of the university community, then filed Title IX complaints against Kipnis, arguing that her essay and a subsequent tweet had been acts of retaliation against Ludlow’s accusers.

Soon Kipnis was forced to submit to hours of questioning about her essay and the ideas underlying it. She was allowed to bring a supporter with her, and chose Stephen Eisenman, the head of the Faculty Senate. When Eisenman told the Senate that he believed the process he’d witnessed was a threat to academic freedom, he was brought up on Title IX charges as well. “This is a trivialization of Title IX, a diminishment,” says Eisenman.

More significant, however, is the pusillanimity of campus bureaucrats who are terrified of lawsuits, particularly in the wake of the Department of Education’s Title IX investigations into campus handling of sexual assault. Ange-Marie Hancock, a professor of political science and gender studies at the University of Southern California and author of Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics, observes that attacks on academic free speech are not just coming from the left. She points to Steven Salaita, whose job offer at University of Illinois was withdrawn due to tweets that were hostile to Israel, and Shannon Gibney, a tenured African-American English professor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College who was reprimanded for creating a “hostile learning environment” for white men.

Colleges and universities, says Hancock, are “increasing not run by faculty or former faculty. They’re run by professional administrators who have a customer service or client service attitude towards students, as opposed to an educational attitude.” Indeed, according to the Delta Cost Project, an American Institutes for Research program that studies the rising price of higher education, at most four years colleges and universities the average number of faculty and staff per administrator declined by around 40 percent between 1990 and 2012.

Buchanan attributes her firing, in part, to a disjunction between the values of the administrators and those of the professoriate. Starting about 10 years ago, she says, “We noticed that every new administrator that came to LSU had the discourse and language of a business person. So, for example, my dean calls himself the CEO of his organization.”

Adler was a very popular teacher, and the attempt to push her out caused an uproar. Students started an online petition in her favor; one wrote, “Patti Adler’s deviance class was the best class I have ever taken. In particular, the interactive prostitution lecture was the most memorable and informative lecture I have ever experienced.” The National Coalition Against Censorship, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Colorado ACLU, and the Student Press Law Center wrote a letter urging the immediate reinstatement of Adler’s class “without further reviews or conditions.” The American Association of University Professors championed Adler’s cause, decrying “an unwarranted and egregious violation of her academic freedom.” She thought about suing, but ultimately decided she “didn’t have the stomach for it.”

Eventually, the public pressure grew so intense that the university said she could continue to teach the Deviance class. Adler, however, still felt her position to be too precarious. She returned for one last semester, then retired. “I wanted to make it seem like they had not beaten me, but I knew I could only stay for a semester,” she says.

“I feel bad that I was caught so unaware, that I hadn’t realized that the codes had shifted,” Adler says. “People would be well advised to quake in their boots when they hear they’re being investigated.”

Source:
http://www.thenation.com/article/this-professor-was-fired-for-saying-fuck-no-in-class/

 

[fuzzyset]

Recently, there’s been much discussion of what some say is a growing intellectual chill and sexual panic on campus. In the latest example, on June 19, Teresa Buchanan, a tenured associate professor of education at Louisiana State University, was fired from the school where she’d taught for twenty years for using off-color language.

It's amazing that professors can be fired, not for lack of output/performance, but for using words you'd find on primetime television.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

Association of Amish University Students has won this round.

 

[BocoDragon]

Maybe it's just that school or that subculture. My Uni teachers swear all over the place here in Vancouver, usually to excited responses from the class.

Maybe you have to be liked, though.

 

[Trojita]

This can get you fired? But you can't be fired for being a shitty professor at my alma mater apparently.

Students now a days think they deserve an A.

Blackmailing a teacher for a grade by saying that they sexually harrassed her, even though the professor is gay, is Grade A Dumb.

 

[shadyspace]

I just graduated and students and professors alike threw around the f-word all the time.

 

[fuzzyset]

Maybe it's just that school or that subculture. My Uni teachers swear all over the place here in Vancouver, usually to excited responses from the class.

Maybe you have to be liked, though.

The article mentions

“If you talk to administrators at universities around the country, they are really responding in a deeply overwrought way to the expansion of Title IX enforcement by the Obama administration,”

So, it's an American thing.

 

[Dennis]

Soon Kipnis was forced to submit to hours of questioning about her essay and the ideas underlying it. She was allowed to bring a supporter with her, and chose Stephen Eisenman, the head of the Faculty Senate. When Eisenman told the Senate that he believed the process he’d witnessed was a threat to academic freedom, he was brought up on Title IX charges as well. “This is a trivialization of Title IX, a diminishment,” says Eisenman.

Noting to see here, we just Kafka now.

This thread is a good companion piece for todays theme on GAF.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1094253

 

[Syriel]

Maybe it's just that school or that subculture. My Uni teachers swear all over the place here in Vancouver, usually to excited responses from the class.

Maybe you have to be liked, though.

The article touches on a number of different schools.

It's not just one school, it is using examples from multiple schools to show how Title IX cases in the US are being woefully mishandled.

The headline is from the article, but the piece is much more than just the headline.

 

[The Llama]

How the hell is Title IX being brought into this.

 

[Xe4]

There is no way a tenured proffesor was fired for just using swear words.

 

[The Xtortionist]

My crotchety old Social Inequality teacher once asked us what you get when you scrape the back of your mother's teeth. Nobody knew.

Spoiler

A cumback

I was worried that someone would need to call 911 for everyone who almost died laughing.

 

[RiccochetJ]

I thought one purposes of tenure was to protect against this sort of thing. Am I mistaken?

 

[jay]

Noting to see here, we just Kafka now.

Better to live in The Trial than be offended by something.

 

[Syriel]

How the hell is Title IX being brought into this.

From the article (regarding Buchanan):

Nevertheless, the committee said her language created a “hostile learning environment” that constituted sexual harassment.

That's how the committee was rationalizing it as a Title IX issue.

 

[HORRORSHØW]

that's some bullshit

 

[tcrunch]

There is no way a tenured proffesor was fired for just using swear words.

LSU's statement about it is as follows:

Recent news reports about the termination of one of LSU’s professors have not been entirely factual. Teresa Buchanan was not terminated due to isolated incidents. LSU has documented evidence of a history of inappropriate behavior that included verbal abuse, intimidation and harassment of our students.

LSU has been concerned about this matter for quite some time, and after complaints from students and educational providers, we took the appropriate steps, including removing her from the classroom since December 2013. In addition to LSU’s own findings, a review by her faculty peers found that Dr. Buchanan violated policies regarding student harassment.

Dr. Buchanan created a consistently hostile and abusive environment in the classroom. Additionally, she was asked not to return to more than one elementary school in the Baton Rouge area within the last three years because of her inappropriate behavior. Based upon this consistent pattern of hostile and abusive behavior that negatively impacted LSU students, we believed it was necessary to terminate her employment.

LSU does not normally comment on matters that involve potential litigation, but we believe it’s important to state the facts in order to correct some misperceptions regarding this issue. This case is not about the rights of tenured professors or academic freedom, as some of the press have reported. LSU had an obligation to take action on this matter. We take our responsibility to protect students from abusive behavior very seriously, and we will vigorously defend our students’ rights to a harassment-free educational environment.

The professor denies the conclusions of this response.

 

[MHWilliams]

Ohh, we got two today!

More significant, however, is the pusillanimity of campus bureaucrats who are terrified of lawsuits, particularly in the wake of the Department of Education’s Title IX investigations into campus handling of sexual assault. Ange-Marie Hancock, a professor of political science and gender studies at the University of Southern California and author of Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics, observes that attacks on academic free speech are not just coming from the left. She points to Steven Salaita, whose job offer at University of Illinois was withdrawn due to tweets that were hostile to Israel, and Shannon Gibney, a tenured African-American English professor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College who was reprimanded for creating a “hostile learning environment” for white men.

What? But that's not what we've been told before! *shock*

Colleges and universities, says Hancock, are “increasing not run by faculty or former faculty. They’re run by professional administrators who have a customer service or client service attitude towards students, as opposed to an educational attitude.” Indeed, according to the Delta Cost Project, an American Institutes for Research program that studies the rising price of higher education, at most four years colleges and universities the average number of faculty and staff per administrator declined by around 40 percent between 1990 and 2012.

As I pointed out in the other thread.

From the Vox article, I was a liberal adjunct professor. My liberal students didn’t scare me at all.

In fact, a closer read of the article shows that the actual problem the professor faces isn't the rise of a scary new breed of students. Students, after all, have been complaining about their professors and just about everything else since time immemorial.

Rather, if university faculty are feeling disempowered in their classrooms, that's because they do, in fact, have less power at work: the shrinking pool of tenure-track jobs and the corresponding rise in the numbers of poorly paid adjuncts means many university teachers are in a precarious position right now.

The American Association of University Professors reports that 76 percent of faculty across all US institutions are adjuncts — non-tenured contract positions that universities can terminate or not renew at will. Those uncertain jobs are also poorly paid — a study from the US House of Representatives last year found that a majority of adjuncts live below the poverty line, and that they rarely have access to health, retirement, or other benefits. Tenure-track jobs are comparatively rare, and even tenure itself may be becoming a political target: Wisconsin Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker is pushing legislation that would weaken tenure protections for state university professors.

That means that, as Vox's anonymous correspondent wrote in his article, "the academic job market is brutal. Teachers who are not tenured or tenure-track faculty members have no right to due process before being dismissed, and there's a mile-long line of applicants eager to take their place."

In that context, it's hardly surprising that non-tenured university lecturers would take an extremely conservative approach to any perceived threat to their job security. As the "liberal professor" wrote, "In this type of environment, boat-rocking isn't just dangerous, it's suicidal, and so teachers limit their lessons to things they know won't upset anybody."

That is a real issue, with real implications for education, and for academic freedom. But pinning the blame on students' embrace of identity politics is a mistake. If adjuncts and junior faculty members feel insecure enough to censor their teaching or work, then that's a problem in their relationship with their universities, not in their relationships with their students.

Indeed, in that academic environment, it wouldn't matter if liberal identity politics disappeared tomorrow. Some students will always be unhappy about something, and if faculty are this nervous, that will influence their teaching. Indeed, the article notes that the only actual complaint the professor ever received was from a conservative student angry at his "communistical" tendencies because he refused to blame poor black homeowners for the 2008 financial crisis.

The problem isn't the substance of student complaints — the problem is that university lecturers are so terrified of the effect student complaints could have. That's a problem to be solved by universities having faculty members' backs, not by somehow silencing the debate over identity politics.

Sound familiar?

 

[Lunar15]

Yeah, honestly, I doubt it was just swearing. I think she was probably extremely hostile and it built up. I mean, I'm guessing here, but given how much my professors swore, I just can't see this being an isolated incident leading to a dismissal.

Also, this thread title is awful. It's definitely baiting. There were multiple transgressions.

 

[hydruxo]

I've had a ton of professors who should've been fired then.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

My professor called me a cunt numerous times, he wouldn't last a minute in some of these schools today. I miss that bastard.

 

[Cosmo Clock 21]

Just stop accepting students you deem at risk of being easily offended. Easy

 

[Syriel]

Ohh, we got two today!

What? But that's not what we've been told before! *shock*

As I pointed out in the other thread.

From the Vox article, I was a liberal adjunct professor. My liberal students didn’t scare me at all.

Sound familiar?

It sounds familiar, but that's because it's what the article is about, as noted in the OP. The issue is with how administrators are running the colleges.

Sounds like you're in violent agreement with both the OP and the linked article.

Yeah, honestly, I doubt it was just swearing. I think she was probably extremely hostile and it built up. I mean, I'm guessing here, but given how much my professors swore, I just can't see this being an isolated incident leading to a dismissal.

Also, this thread title is awful. It's definitely baiting. There were multiple transgressions.

Thread to discuss an article cites the source and uses title of article as thread title. If that's baiting, then I'm not sure how you ever have a discussion.

And if you actually read the article (as opposed to just drive-by posting based on the article's headline) you'll see that not only was there more than just a single incident of swearing, but the article discusses multiple situations at multiple campuses.

If you're not going to read the article, at least read the OP which includes quotes from some of the different situations talked about.

 

[speculawyer]

Ugh. Why didn't you put a trigger-warning in the subject line? You forced me to suffer a micro-aggression from this person that did not check his privilege!

 

[kirblar]

Additionally, she was asked not to return to more than one elementary school

There's cursing in college, and then there's that.

The Adler situation probably deserved more space in the OP:

 Adler learned all about administrative overreaction two years ago, when either one or several students complained about a classroom role-playing exercise. A tenured full professor who’d won both teaching and research awards, Adler’s signature course was called “Deviance in U.S. Society.” Each semester concluded with a skit, in which teaching assistants, former students and friends collaborate on scripts about various figures in the prostitution world, then act them out in front of the class. “That’s how you engage 500 students,” she says of the exercise, which featured characters including an Eastern European “slave whore,” a pimp, a “bar whore,” and a high-end escort. “The class is about the stratification of a deviant subculture,” she says, and the performance was meant to bring that home.

Hearing about the skit now, it’s not surprising it raised red flags for administrators. But it had been a feature of Adler’s class for over 20 years. Each semester, around 500 students saw it, and there had never been any objections, at least until the fall of 2013. That, she says, is when she learned that a teaching assistant had reported that the skit made some students uncomfortable. (In a public statement, the university’s provost said there had been several complaints.) Officials from the university’s discrimination and harassment office then attended that semester’s performance, though Adler hadn’t noticed them. They deemed the skit a risk to the university, and to make the risk go away, Adler says they offered her a buyout.

Adler is adamant that, had she been asked, she’d have ended the role-playing exercise. “They never said to me, ‘We think the skit is a risk to the university and you could be sued,’” she says. “I’m afraid of them. I would have fucking dropped it like a hot potato.” But she didn’t have a chance to answer the charges against her or to revise her curriculum. The administration, she says, just wanted her gone. If she didn’t take the buyout, she was told she could no longer teach her signature course and was warned that should any complaints be lodged against her in the future, “I could be accused of violating sexual harassment policy and fired for cause. I’d lose my retirement benefits, including my medical insurance.”

Adler loved her job, and says she was devastated. (In his statement, the provost disputed Adler’s version of events: “As to comments she has made that she might be fired in the future, I should note that any employee at the University—including faculty members—found responsible for violating the University’s sexual harassment policy, is subject to discipline up to and including termination.”)

 

[TAJ]

'Fired' is violent language. Can we say 'separated'? Wait no, that might trigger people with abandonment issues. How about 'on extended holiday'? Who doesn't like a long vacation?

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Title IX reform was a mistake, it's nothing but trash.

 

[Kusagari]

Every single professor I had in college needs to be fired then.

 

[Toothless]

My professors say "Fuck" all the time, and it's usually to the joy of all the students. Ridiculous.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

More significant, however, is the pusillanimity of campus bureaucrats

What in the actual fuck?

 

[BlackGoku03]

What in the actual fuck?

Basically saying they are cowards. I hate words like that in real life but they're great in college papers.