Thursday, May 08, 2008

Dartmouth's 'Hostile' Environment

An academic nutcase with no concept of academic values -- or much else

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 expose, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

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." [How awful!!] 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."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways." Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

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.

Such conduct is hardly representative of the professoriate at Dartmouth, my alma mater. Faculty members tend to be professional. They also tend to be sane. That said, even at - or especially at - putatively superior schools, students are spoiled for choice when it comes to professors who share ideologies like Ms. Venkatesan's. The main result is to make coursework pathetically easy. Like filling in a Mad Libs, just patch something together about "interrogating heteronormativity," or whatever, and wait for the returns to start rolling in. I once wrote a term paper for a lit-crit course where I "deconstructed" the MTV program "Pimp My Ride." A typical passage: "Each episode is a text of inescapable complexity . . . Our received notions of what constitutes a ride are constantly subverted and undermined." It received an A.

Where the standards are always minimum, most kids simply float along with the academic drafts, avoid as much work as possible and accept the inflated grade. Why not? It's effortless, and there are better ways to spend time than thinking deeply about ecofeminism.

The remarkable thing about the Venkatesan affair, to me, is that her students cared enough to argue. Normally they would express their boredom with the material by answering emails on their laptops or falling asleep. But here they staged a rebellion, a French Counter-Revolution against Professor Defarge. Maybe, despite the professor's best efforts, there's life in American colleges yet.

Source






Homosexual propaganda disallowed

A rather amazing foray into theology by a university is ruled unconstitutional

A federal judge has ruled that the Georgia Institute of Technology had materials in its office to support gay students that amounted to unconstitutional support for some religious groups over others. The case may have no practical impact at Georgia Tech as the materials in question are already gone. But the legal group that brought the suit and other analysts agree that such materials may well exist at other public colleges and may now become the focus of more scrutiny or legal battles. The Georgia Tech ruling is believed to be the first of its kind.

The ruling came in a case involving a range of issues over speech codes and support for religious groups at Georgia Tech - issues that mirror those being raised at other public colleges and many of which were resolved in earlier rulings or agreements between the parties in the case. The new part of the ruling, however, focused on a set of materials used in the "Safe Space" program at Georgia Tech, a part of the institute's diversity office designed to support gay and lesbian students.

The case was filed on behalf of two Georgia Tech students, assisted by the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal group that has sued many public colleges accusing them of violating the rights of religious students. The portion of the suit about Safe Space argued that materials at the public university were effectively religious in that they endorsed some faiths over others - and that these materials were as a result unconstitutional. Judge J. Owen Forrester agreed.

The materials in question dealt with issues that may be faced by religious gay students, or by gay students challenged about the sexuality by people from different faiths. One passage cited in the ruling says that "historically, Biblical passages taken out of context have been used to justify such things as slavery, the inferior status of women, and the persecution of religious minorities." Such attitudes have led some religious groups to declare "that homosexuality is immoral," the group's materials state, while others "have begun to look at sexual relationships in terms of the love, mutual support, commitments and the responsibility of the partners rather than the sex of the individuals involved."

In another section, the materials discuss specific faiths, noting which faiths recognize same-sex unions, and the conditions under which some faiths will ordain gay clergy. While the Episcopal Church is praised as "more receptive to gay worshipers than many other Christian denominations," the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is described as having "the most anti-gay policies of any religion widely practiced in the United States." The section on Roman Catholic belief also notes that some theologians have argued, "much to the embarrassment of the Vatican," that the medieval church recognized unions for same-sex couples.

In his ruling, Judge Forrester noted that Safe Space is not just one among many student groups, but one with close ties - financial and staffing - to the university. In this context, he said, it is irrelevant that officials involved in the program stressed that the materials in question had no religious purpose, and were simply motivated by a desire to help students understand the views of different religious groups on questions of sexuality.

Because of the close ties to the university, Judge Forrester said, the issue is the "clear preference of one religion over another contained" in the Safe Space materials, which he said was clearly unconstitutional. The decision ordered Georgia Tech to remove the materials in question. A statement from the university said that it "disagrees" with the decision, but that it is "moot" because the materials are no longer used by the Safe Space program.

Nate Kellum, a lawyer at the Alliance Defense Fund, said that the issues are not moot elsewhere. While the exact names of programs and the materials they use may vary, "these kinds of things are all over the place," he said, and other public colleges would be well advised to note this week's decision. Even in other parts of the country, where a ruling by a single federal judge would not be binding, he said, "I think the logic and reasoning would support the idea that this practice is unconstitutional."

A professor making comments in a classroom similar to those in the Safe Space materials would not be unconstitutional, Kellum said, because such statements would not carry the same weight as coming from the institution. He added that his group was not opposed to all services public colleges offer for gay students. "The problem with this was that the university was denigrating firmly held religious beliefs," he said. The Safe Space materials "held in high regard certain denominations that found no moral implications in homosexual relations, but denigrated those that did find moral implications."

Brian Moulton, a lawyer for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, agreed that the Safe Space materials were problematic. He noted that nothing in the decision makes it impossible for a public college to offer programs for gay students, and that the only limitations concern discussion of religion. The language used in the materials about religions "did very much sound like taking sides," which is "very problematic with public funds."

Others were more critical of the decision. Steve Sanders, a Chicago appellate lawyer and former public university administrator, said that some of the materials at issue "might strike some readers as rather shallow and tendentious," but he added that "I think you have to squint awfully hard to conclude that, as a First Amendment matter, they either denigrate or proselytize on behalf of any particular religious perspective. While the materials may betray a certain political or cultural point of view and we can debate the extent to which universities should be in that business, I think it was something of a stretch for the court to say they amounted to government favoritism toward one set of religious beliefs at the expense of another."

Sanders also noted that "religious activist groups" like those frequently supported by the Alliance Defense Fund "have properly sought to contribute their perspective on homosexuality to the larger market place of ideas" and that these groups "understandably employ religious texts and religious concepts," when they do so. He added that "I read the Georgia Tech Safe Space materials not as a foray into theology for its own sake, but rather as an effort to engage and critique the claims made by anti-gay religious groups."

Sanders said that "some might see it as a bit hypocritical for a religiously partisan group like the Alliance Defense Fund," which says it wants to promote "robust public debate," to "show this sort of hypersensitivity and file a lawsuit when a group like Safe Space criticizes those perspectives." The suit, he added, "raises the suspicion that this isn't so much about having an open and robust debate as it is about using the tools of law to shut down the other side."

Source

1 comment:

OBloodyHell said...

> Sanders also noted that "religious activist groups" like those frequently supported by the Alliance Defense Fund "have properly sought to contribute their perspective on homosexuality to the larger market place of ideas" and that these groups "understandably employ religious texts and religious concepts,"

I'm not going to weigh in overmuch on the general topic, but it seems to me that, in order for there to be balance, the gay group would need to allow for some open discussion with those who are choosing a gay lifestyle, they would have to allow someone from the religious side of things to discuss why they take issue with the activities... otherwise, judging the religion purely based on its receptivity inevitably turns into advocacy of one set of religions over others.

If one is forced to talk to members of a church to find out how receptive it is, it opens up the discussion about the problems some religious groups have with the activity. A hell-and-damnation group isn't going to have any success in changing minds, but there are only a percentage of them which adopt a non-persuasive, "stay away from me, heathen!" type fundamentalist approach. I'd suspect that, although probably 75-80% of Xtian churches directly oppose gay lifestyles, only about half of those are going to be heavily condemning for it, and about 20-25% of them are going to take the track of dissuading you using discussion and with God's help -- but it's always your choice in the matter.

The endless depiction of Xtians as mindless, blathering nutjobs is a liberal fantasy, the same one which allows them to equate all Xtians with All Islamic Fundamentalists. It's all so far away from where they stand that all things are a tiny, shapeless blur.