Dartmouth Prof To Sue Her Students?
Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their “anti-intellectualism” violated her civil rights.
Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will “name names.”
What were the student’s sins? They questioned some of her assertions in class!
Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful,” she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. “They’d argue with your ideas.” This caused “subversiveness,” a principle English professors usually favor.
Ms. Venkatesan’s scholarly specialty is “science studies,” which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, “teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth.” She continues: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”
Oh, the horrors!
After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on “ecofeminism,” which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But “these weren’t thoughtful statements,” Ms. Venkatesan protests. “They were irrational.” The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student’s “diatribe,” several of his classmates applauded.
Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was “fascist demagoguery.” Then, after consulting a physician about “intellectual distress,” she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.
Considering the fact that most teachers would be thrilled to have their students so engaged in a lecture that they ask questions, one must wonder what Ms. Venkatesan found so objectionable. Having taken a few literary theory classes himself, the Beast thinks he knows the problem.
Literary theory is crap. When one must teach crap, one gets a little defensive about challenges, because there is no good defense available. This is particularly galling for feminists.
But before we expand on that topic, let’s have a little look into recent history to see if we can find the root cause of Ms. Venkatesan’s case of the vapors.
Back in the 1980’s, feminists ran into a scientific wall. Their assertion that the genders were equal in all things (aside from certain surface physical abilities) began springing leaks when science departments on campus (who had originally been recruited to prove the truth of this) started collecting data that belied this article of feminist faith. Like a series of underground A-Bomb tests, the controversy rumbled below the surface for years. The controversy pitted geeky science profs against hairy-legged feminists (neither likely to get laid by the opposite sex) and became so toxic that womens studies departments even picketed their own science departments. But most of the battle was conducted in faculty meetings, with feminists flexing their political muscle to squelch research projects they now knew were likely to produce results inimical to their faith, or throw heretics out of the bunker (*Cough! Larry Summers!). But the truth eventually leaked out.
With some of their most fundamental assertions now proven irrational, academic feminists went for the only option available to them at the time: they rejected reason. Then they tried to reconcile it.
Witness the birth of “Feminist Science Studies“. Think of it as Gynocratic Creationism.
But there’s a problem. How to bring “Science Studies” out of the backwaters of the Women’s Studies swamp and movie it into the general campus. This is where French narrative theory (more widely known as “Crit Lit”) becomes useful.
Critical theory (literary criticism)
The second meaning of critical theory is that of theory used in literary criticism (”critical theory”) and in the analysis and understanding of literature. This is discussed in greater detail under literary theory. This form of critical theory is not necessarily oriented toward radical social change or even toward the analysis of society, but instead specializes on the analysis of texts and text-like phenomena. It originated among literary scholars and in the discipline of literature in the 1960s and 1970s, and has really only come into broad use since the 1980s, especially as theory used in literary studies became increasingly influenced by European philosophy and social theory and thereby became more “theoretical”.
This meaning of “critical theory” originated entirely within the humanities. There are works of literary critical theory that show no awareness of the sociological version of critical theory.
So what does this mean? It means that the unwitting student who signs up for this class (and it’s odd that they teach it at Dartmouth as freshman comp) will be given an anchor text and then made to interpret that text within the following guidelines:
DF
|
HLP |
P cont.QSV |
Essentially crit lit requires you to take a book, like, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and torture the text for insights into the Plight Of Women or The Plight of Africans, or The Plight of anybody else in the liberal pantheon. This is what Ms. Venkatesan apparently was attempting to do with her “Feminist Science Studies French Narrative” class – get it out of Women’s Studies and into the English Department. This is classic Academic Logrolling, and obviously the students didn’t buy it. Ms. Venkatesan – most likely unaccustomed to challenges and unequipped by the nature of her specialty for defending the indefensible – fell apart under scrutiny.
She has since fled Dartmouth in a snit for the presumably greener pastures of Northwestern. Good luck to them both!
The Beast gorwled: When one must teach crap, one gets a little defensive about challenges
yeah this whole thing kind of reminds me of the scene from Clerks where the guisance counselor is going through all of the eggs in the store looking for the perfect dozen. The one lady knew he was a guidance counselor because only someone with a job that meaningless and inane would dedicate all of that time and effort to finding the perfect dozen eggs.
Sorry if I’m the only one in the group who knows what the hell I was just talking about but I couldn’t find it on youtube.
and the Beast hits the nail on the head with this one – Considering the fact that most teachers would be thrilled to have their students so engaged in a lecture that they ask questions, one must wonder what Ms. Venkatesan found so objectionable
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t part of teaching provoking thoughtful commentary from your students?
E, DFV don’t get any crazy ideas. I’m sure you’ve got a couple of students you’ve had dreams of dragging into court.
thompaine
May 6, 2008 at 9:58 am
Great points. I wish someone would invent a tolerance thermometer….I bet the level of intolerance has risen dramatically now that liberals have become its guardians. Most professors don’t sue their students who dare to question….they just bully them and find an excuse to flunk them.
Terri E
May 6, 2008 at 10:00 am
“they just bully them and find an excuse to flunk them.”
Ah! Such a shame The Classics are dead in Academia, Terri!
Thom she had three strikes against her:
1. Out Of Her Depth – She came to DARTMOUTH as a TA from UCSD! Think about that – do they even write in whole sentences at that University?
What’s the favorite major – Surf Studies?
Typical topic sentence at UCSD: “What that Macbeth dude did was WAY BOGUS!”
2. She had no business teaching Crit Lit to Freshmen who have not learned to just shut up and ride it out.
3. She tried to fold her own specialty into an unrelated intro course. This puts the Beast in mind of an old adage:
Combine equal parts Dog Feces with Ice Cream.
Guaranteed the resulting product will taste much more like the former than the latter.
But since Literary Theory and Feminist Science Studies are both crap we must use a different recipe:
Combine equal parts horse feces with dog feces.
The resulting product cannot be swallowed by those not trained to do so.
hairybeast
May 6, 2008 at 10:38 am
Sounds like in general she had no business teaching that course. Like I said though I’m not sure she has any business teaching at all. I’d love to hear her explanation of what the hell ecofeminism has to do with French Literary Theory…. No wait a minute no I wouldn’t
thompaine
May 6, 2008 at 11:11 am
Money
E the Wise
May 6, 2008 at 12:10 pm
[...] May 6, 2008 · No Comments Professor sues students for asking questions [...]
A Sign the Apaocalypse is Upon Us? « Musings of A Manwhore
May 6, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Even though I am a hairy-legged feminist (OK, that’s not true, I shaved my legs this morning) myself, I have to agree with a lot of your points. When I was teaching in a university, I often wanted to sue my students, too, but it was because they were NOT challenging ANYTHING (although they did rouse themselves to object to my forcing them to do a lot of reading and writing, and to write coherently and grammatically)…
Anything taken too far (or too seriously) ends up shooting itself in the foot: that includes feminism, crit lit (or lit crit? all that Foucault stuff, anyhow)… and empiricism, as well, for that matter.
Delany
May 6, 2008 at 2:03 pm
The regret here is what ultimately could have broadened her confessional exposé on patriarchy, resulted in a retreat of academic jingoism to the judiciary, which apparently has no social construct.
Oranjz
May 6, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Orangz should be writing liberal prose for the Peoples cube.
E the Wise
May 6, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Actually I think Freshman comp for a serious academic college is a good place for literary theory, or at least an introductory course. Almost all colleges require English students to take the basics of literary theory to be further developed in later studies (if not an advanced course). Ivy League schools which pride themselves on developing intelligent people for the new, advancing world, should push all their students to develop these skills (of course there were problems with this scenario, as the teacher is seemingly off her rocker, but the principle seems like a good one).
mkatch
May 6, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I don’t even know where to begin. The idiocy is overwhelming and can only be handled in limited doses. A differing viewpoint and scattered applause is “fascist demagoguery”? There is a reason we like to put the term “common sense” before the word conservative. Because there is little “common sense” on the “other side”. If it wasn’t for those darn patriarchal males and their various misogynistic advancements (scientific and otherwise) that she’s been so sorely denied, she’d be illiterate with thirteen children, down at the river beating clothes on the rocks, and have an average lifespan of about thirty-five years. And she certainly wouldn’t be contemplating lawsuits from the comfy confines of the faculty lounge of a university of higher learning.
What a dolt.
Dave the Infidel Sage
May 6, 2008 at 10:25 pm
LOL E! You pissed Orangz off and changed the link to us on his blog to the original WSJ article. Nice going (Chuckle).
Mkatch, what good will learning to eviscerate Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” for insights into the plight of “Queers” do for freshmen – the majority of whom won’t go on to major in English anyway? How useful are propaganda “skills” in the “Modern advancing world”?
hairybeast
May 6, 2008 at 10:36 pm
“fascist demagoguery”
Pure projection, don’t you think, Dave?
hairybeast
May 6, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Bingo!
Dave the Infidel Sage
May 6, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Personally, I have no problem with feminism, but I do believe that it, like any ideology has to be kept honest. Science, Reason and Progress must fuel the fires that refine the concept we call Equality.
grant czerepak
May 7, 2008 at 4:22 am
shocked: MALAYSIA MAKE NEW RULES FOR CHRISTIANS!!
EVERY CHRISTIANS MUST SAY “ALLAH” RATHER THAN “GOD” & DONT SAY “TRINITY” ANYMORE..
This is because English language not suitable anymore because the original Bible is in Arabic.
The full story is here: ckasih.blogspot.com
ckasih
May 7, 2008 at 6:15 am
“fascist demagoguery”
So, is it the thing to do to call any speech you don’t like “fascist” or “fascist demagoguery”? Seems like a trend. Someone should sue people who misuse the word fascist!
totaltransformation
May 7, 2008 at 9:20 am
It is fascist to advocate suing over the use of the word fascist; you fascist!
pg - your humble messenger
May 7, 2008 at 9:49 am
“It is fascist to advocate suing over the use of the word fascist; you fascist!”
That kind of anti-fascist statement proves one thing pg- YOU ARE A FASCIST!
Abusing the English language can be so fun and entertaining.
totaltransformation
May 7, 2008 at 9:59 am
Why would orangz be pissed?
E the Wise
May 7, 2008 at 10:01 am
Only a fascist would accuse somebody of being a fascist you bunch of fascists.
thompaine
May 7, 2008 at 10:14 am
“Only a fascist would accuse somebody of being a fascist you bunch of fascists.”
Wait, everyone hold on here a second. What does “fascist” mean? Isn’t it a synonym for haberdasher?
totaltransformation
May 7, 2008 at 10:18 am
She doesn’t need a lawyer, she needs a shrink
A.Ho
May 7, 2008 at 10:21 am
I didn’t read through the intellectual part – for any newly minted, or for that matter old penny, academic interested in teaching, I recommend a book by Boise called New Faculty – or something similar.
You will wish you had this book the day you started.
To the HR department and Chair’man’ of Department: shame – how you can let this go so far. Students shouldn’t have to communicate through protests. It would have been evident to you through the chatter boards and indeed the professor’s demeanor that something was awry.
To the students, I am sorry. Equally though, read up on self-fulfilling prophecies. Good student leaders could have turned this around. As the situation began to turn sour, you could have intervened. Once a spiral set in where students believed a class would be a disaster, the end was nigh. This is written up in Pymalion in the Classroom. That describes how teachers beliefs set off a downward spiral. It works both ways. Nonetheless, I am sorry. The university has the greater responsibility and the powers-that-be should have approached you long before it came to this.
scotchcart
May 7, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Pretty standard anti-intellectual stuff. The world is as simple as we are. Common sense is a theory of the world that effaces its theoretical dimension. In other words, every act of interpretation relies on some theory of the world, though the ones most conservatives like are those that don’t post themselves as such and demand almost nothing from their practicioners. Kudos for actually using a wiki entry to demonstrate the arcane “liberal fascism” of critical theory. Hilarious. If you’re really serious about understanding it I’d recommend Catherine Belsey’s Critical Practice. Be warned: you will have to think.
apciv
May 8, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Pretty standard arrogant academese. Fascinating, isn’t it how all the categories of “Critical Theory” conform to a certain pre-determined political/social point of view, huh? As for the Wiki entry – it’s just a jumping off point for the Great Unwashed for whom you show so much respect, apciv. If they wish to fall deeper into the rabbit hole they can do it with out the help of this Beast. He has been there and he wasn’t very impressed by the view.
hairybeast
May 8, 2008 at 11:15 pm
[...] on May 9, 2008 by Dan (Fitness) In an otherwise sharp post (a professor suing students? wtf?), hairybeast let’s loose some really smelly bull: Back in the 1980’s, feminists ran into a scientific [...]
Bullshitting Against Feminism « Fitness for the Occasion
May 8, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Ah, the academic feminista mind has at last met a barrier that cannot be surmounted. Students who are no longer willing to tolerate pure bullshit as a lecture topic. Let there be no mistake about it critical literary theory makes as much sense in the real world as whatever 100 monkeys on typewriters can crank out in a given hour.
Nobody should have to put up with that crap to get a degree.
John P.
May 8, 2008 at 11:48 pm
[...] And then I read this: [...]
Feminism vs. Femininity « Erika: [noun] mystery-flavoured cupcake
May 8, 2008 at 11:51 pm
You’re quoting Wikipedia? Come on. Now I know you’re not serious.
theprlab
May 9, 2008 at 12:08 am
Prlab – Wiki is good enough for a quick rundown of the topic. See anything in there you disagree with?
hairybeast
May 9, 2008 at 12:11 am
[...] Absolutely insane. [...]
Teacher Sues Students « Something should go here, maybe later.
May 9, 2008 at 12:43 am
Boy, the Beast’s “hairy-legged feminists” line really stung a few heinies. Still waiting for complaints from the “geeky science profs”, however. Wonder why they aren’t screaming too?
hairybeast
May 9, 2008 at 10:09 am
From Amazon.com….
Molecular Biology in Narrative Form: A Study of the Experimental Trajectory of Science (Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics) (Hardcover)
by Priya Venkatesan Hays (Author)
“Molecular Biology in Narrative Form is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study that shows a connection between molecular biology and French narrative theory, and, from a unique perspective, bridges the gap between two disciplines that seem mutually exclusive. “
Ziggy
May 9, 2008 at 1:25 pm
[...] http://constitutionclub.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/dartmouth-prof-to-sue-her-students/ [...]
Hilariously funny critique of literary theory « The Palindrome’s Post
May 9, 2008 at 3:42 pm
“Pretty standard arrogant academese. Fascinating, isn’t it how all the categories of “Critical Theory” conform to a certain pre-determined political/social point of view, huh? As for the Wiki entry – it’s just a jumping off point for the Great Unwashed for whom you show so much respect, apciv. If they wish to fall deeper into the rabbit hole they can do it with out the help of this Beast. He has been there and he wasn’t very impressed by the view.”
If you like, I’ll try to use smaller words. Because assuming that people are too dim to contend with a long sentence is really an anti-elitist way of showing respect for them, right? Beast, critical theory is an outgrowth of the Humanist impulse to know the world not by virtue of some scriptural authority but by abstraction, hypothesis, test and proof– Francis Bacon’s “knowledge is power” 500 years later. It can be difficult and even infuriating, but that’s part of the point: to interrupt the kind of intellectual complacency which holds that meaning is of necessity singular (or, worse, “all relative”). Come on, Beast: Priya needs your love.
apciv
May 9, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Sorry – we’re talking “Literary” Critical Theory and it has nothing to do with “abstraction, hypothesis, test and proof”. It’s not science – you got flummoxed by the title. But thanks for playing.
hairybeast
May 9, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I think that’s the point of Hays’ work: that science is, in addition to empirical method, narrative. The truth-claims of the hard sciences have a ‘literary’ dimension in this regard.
Banjo
May 10, 2008 at 9:57 am
Banjo – apparently her fellow scientists weren’t too impressed with her line of research:
From The Dartmouth Independent
hairybeast
May 10, 2008 at 10:27 am
[...] Left has had a thorny relationship with science for a while now. The Beast alluded to it in an earlier post in which he pointed out that researchers have come up with findings inimical to many cherished [...]
“Science Studies” - Narrative Replaces Reason. « Constitution Club
May 13, 2008 at 10:49 am