Free Republic

Rigor mortisOn the hetero-patriarchal trappings of “academic rigor” at Purdue. If you are thinking of building a bridge, be careful if your engineer went to Purdue University. Donna Riley, the head of the engineering department at Purdue [Correction: her actual title is Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School of Engineering Education], has put the world on notice that “rigor” is a dirty word. In an article for Engineering Education called “Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit,” Professor Riley, who is also the author of Engineering and Social Justice, argues that academic “rigor” is merely a blind...

The leader of Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education recently declared that academic “rigor” reinforces “white male heterosexual privilege.” Donna Riley, who previously taught engineering at Smith College for 13 years, published an article in the most recent issue of the journal Engineering Education, arguing that academic rigor is a “dirty deed” that upholds “white male heterosexual privilege.”

Donna Riley, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, visited the University Monday to discuss gender-based violence in science, technology, engineering and math fields. Riley discussed and analyzed the engineering, academic and broader U.S. cultures which work together to deny gender-based violence. Riley said gender-based violence not only includes rape, but also stalking, intimate partner violence, harassment, non-consensual sexual contact, verbal abuse and misogynist hate crimes. In the Survey of Academic Field Experiences published by science journal PLOS One in 2014, Riley said two-thirds of women surveyed reported being the victim of sexual harassment while researching in a scientific field, and...