Posted on 05/06/2008 9:14:19 AM PDT by Mongeaux
From the Wall Street Journal:
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!
(Excerpt) Read more at constitutionclub.wordpress.com ...
The confusion was caused by my “newbiness.” I quoted from your source story, then commented on it. However, I don’t (yet) know how to put the quoted source in italics.
Help! How do you do it?
“When she asked me to “prove it”, I underlined the passage in my book and held it up for her to see. “
It isn’t about facts, it is about feelings. Facts are utterly meaningless if you simply choose not to accept them. Aren’t libs a hoot?
Hmmm. I was a Marxist my senior year of college back in 1988. I had a professor who was an immigrant from the Soviet Union. As you might guess, he didn’t think much of planned economies and didn’t think worker-owned firms could be successful. I questioned him a great deal and did research to prove him wrong. I nitpicked and was often very assertive. He always answered my questions and seemed to delight in the challenge.
Years later, after being out in the working world, I told him he was right about everything. To this day, he was my favorite professor.
If one is unable to think and speak clearly, and in an orderly fashion, one can not write in a clear, orderly manner; and if one is not able to do these basic things, one certainly can not effectively teach clear, orderly, concise writing skills.
PV: Sure, I am like, I really have a lot of work right now, I have two book manuscripts to work on, that doesn’t even include the manuscript about my life in higher education, I have two grants to work on, I have an article to work on, I have three articles to work on, I really have so much work to do and you would not even believe, I really have a lot of work to do. I am not the kind of person who wants to make a big fuss about petty or trivial things. So, I have a lot of things to do that I could be focusing my attention on in very productive ways.
TDR: I can understand that. If you like, I can just ask you a different question if you want.
PV: To your question, Tom Cormen was consistently rude to me and he was very unsupportive of my teaching in the Writing Program. I am perplexed as to why he would give me an offer to teach four sections in the Writing Program and then show absolutely no support, no professional support, and I wasn’t even looking for personal support, no professional support or guidance, and trying to do my best job to be a writing instructor. Now to give you the background, I taught writing in my graduate school at the University of California San Diego. I was what they call a teaching assistant. The students get graded by teaching-assistants in the research universities, not like Dartmouth where the professors grade the students. I was a teaching assistant at the University of San Diego, and I have three teaching evaluations. They were all spectacular. They were all spectacular. They were all positive. I could fax them to you. I don’t mind, I could honestly fax them to you, but no professional support or guidance from the beginning. But, I was confident in my ability to teach expository writing, so I went about it with very little support or direction from the department. That is, in itself, very unusual to have a writing program that does not have a structured orientation program for its new writing staff. Very, very extraordinary. Very out of the ordinary. Very unusual.
Someone call the waaaaaaaambulance!
She looks kind of, if you’ll excuse the expression, well, FAT. Maybe if she’d drop a few pounds she might snare a husband. :)
He had the nerve to present data which did not fit a PC agenda and then asked for further scientific inquiry rather than dismissing it in an angry marxist diatribe. He was guilty of linear western male thinking.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_women_draw_fire/
No, it’s the “I’m a bitter bitch” look.
According to Feminazi’s it is ALL due to gender bias, therefore for his heresy Larry Summers was ridden out on a rail.
I was a teaching assistant at the University of San Diego, and I have three teaching evaluations. They were all spectacular.
That's the problem right there: UCSD Vs. Dartmouth? She was way out of her academic/writing depth!
Of course, as a NH resident I might be biased...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2011868/posts Fla. Teacher Accused Of Wizardry
Bump for later read by Mrs Zippo, a professor of english.
1) In an economics class the Prof was on a many minute rant about "buy American, buy American, buy American". Seems OK right? Well, I happen to know what kind of car he drives. So I raised my hand and basically said/asked, "Prof. Neal. You have been ranting about buying American for several minutes now. Would you mind telling the class why you drive a Jaguar?" He ended class. 2) Had to take a diversity class for my degree in economics, so I got stuck with "Women int he economy". You can just imagine the intellectual fire power of the broad teaching this class. I got this lady twice in a big big way, but my favorite was this. She was on a big rant about how horrible the economy was, layoffs all over the place, outsourcing, bla bla bla. She then told the story of her brother who was just "laid off" from IBM. This interested me, so I listened a little closer. She told a sob story of her poor old brother and being laid off after years of service and how horrible it was the such a big company was treating its employees so poorly.
During a pause I raised my hand and started asking questions. My first question was, how long was your brother at IBM? Answer, 28 years. This was all the info I needed. You see, my father happened to be a 39 year IBM big wig finance director. And he happened to be one of the leads in designing the so called "layoffs." So I had a pretty damn good understanding of exactly what her brother got. She was not prepared for a lowley student to have a better understanding of her brothers situation than she did.
So I then asked her, was your brother actually "laid off" or because of his years of service was he given 2 years salary in a cash payout, full Pension benefits, along with full retirement health care benefits, along with his TDSP? She was shocked and could only stammer and claimed that well, I am not sure the extent of what he got.
I told her that is exactly what he got, and that if she doubts me, call her brother and ask him who the "X" (my fathers position) is and see if you recognize the name at all. I then further informed her that her brother, in all likelyhood signed up for the package and did a little dance when he was informed he would be one of those let go. Because tens of thousands put their names in for consideration.
She was none too pleased with me and let it be known. From that day forward she gave me a hard time, and somehow, my final paper for the class, which weighed for most of our grade disappeared! I got my grades for the semester and I had an "incomplete" for her class. So I called her and asked the deal. She said I never handed in my paper. I let her know that I did, and since I live next to campus I will have another copy of it for her in 15 mintues. My grade was quickly corrected. And I am sure she was banking on my not having a 2nd copy of it sitting around. Lucky for me I did.
The writer of this article (Constitution Club) had the following to say about the subject.
“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.”
Mahalo, and thanks for all of the comments on this thread....very entertaining.
Apparently, it is true that people ARE, in some instances, capable of getting their head up their ass.
Perhaps there's hope for the world afterall.
Here’s a good article about the doofuss (if you are not afraid of laughing and barfing at the same time).
http://www.dartmouthindependent.com/archives/2008/05/post-9.html
thanks!
thanks!
Ain't that the truth! I'm on a message board for college profs and the unemployment among English PhDs is staggering. I like books and all myself, but I don't know why these people don't do a little research on job opportunities in the field before they set out on that long slog for a PhD in English.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.