and timely, considering that I just published an article on student evaluations yesterday. This over-educated idiot masquerading as a professor obviously needs a crash course in ethics:
The D reported yesterday on lecturer Priya Venkatesan (also undergrad ‘90 and a Med School researcher) who, in a series of strangely passive-aggressive group emails, announced a plan to sue her students for workplace harassment based on “intolerance of ideas.”
Now if you haven’t seen this yet, even if you’re as cynical as I am, you’ll be picking your jaw up off the floor when you find out what “intolerance of ideas” means.
Few of Venkatesan’s students deny disliking her; they just say it had nothing to do with race, gender, or any other federally-protected characteristic. Rather, the lecturer embodied that special brand of neurotic pedagogical tyranny that includes making rules against questions, refusing to interact with students, and, according to the D,
cancelation [sic] of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan’s opinions about post-modernism
Spontaneous applause during a class on literary criticism? Obviously, there is something very wrong with this picture, so outrageously shocking as to shake Venkatesan to her very core: In a class at an Ivy League university, students were paying attention. Worse: They were engaged, and they cared.
“I was horrified,” Venkatesan said. “My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line … I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression.” …She canceled class because the incident caused her “intellectual and emotional distress,” she said.
Then again, being outsmarted by a room full of eighteen-year-olds must be pretty humiliating. A kinder choice would have been emitting a spontaneous snore or two, then preoccupying themselves with a more innocuous form of disrespect, like text messaging during class or ostentatious yawning.
And what does this have to do with evaluations? Well, apparently student evaluations were what pushed her over the edge into drooling idiocy. Here are a couple:
Professor Venkatesan refuses to answer questions, does not respond to questions, and lectures by reading off her notes in front of her. She did not make me a better writer, she did not explain the concepts well, but she did manage to make my life a living hell.
She offered no help in class or in office hours for papers. When handed a hard copy she read the paper, said it was great, but then gave terrible grades to many students. Later on she began refusing to grade papers and gave the reason that judging by our peer editing abilities we didn’t need her help on papers. She missed/cancelled 5 or 6 classes and as a result the syllabus was squished into 3 weeks and she changed the final project about 4 times. A TERRIBLE CLASS.
I can see how being such a slobbering moron could cause one “intellectual and emotional distress.” Of course, the lawsuit will go nowhere, no matter how much “distress” she suffered, but the degree of oblivion this idiot exhibits is, frankly, breathtaking.
I might add that I had a student a few years ago who really hated my guts — I was never sure why, but she did. She hated me like poison. She really let loose on her evaluation too (yes, they’re anonymous, but it was obvious), but it never occurred to me to sue her. Or even raise hell about it. Life goes on.
But in quite a pleasant contrast to the above idiot, we have this, from (of all places) Inside Higher Ed:
What does it mean to be an American citizen?
From all the heat generated of late over immigration, one might have supposed that some light would have been cast on this crucial question. Given the need to elevate our national dialogue over this issue, it is disheartening that this has yet to happen. It appears that the idea that is American citizenship is all but lost on America’s citizens themselves. Here our universities can be of invaluable assistance, through introducing their students to the perennial questions and issues that define American democratic theory and practice.
Any attempt to perform this task ought to begin at the beginning, with the very justification for our existence as a country—the Declaration of Independence. Its claims are meant to be universal, addressed not only to King George III, but to a “candid world.†The Declaration argues that, in the new American order, blood, creed, and national origin—the constituents of citizenship throughout history—have been dethroned. Instead, U.S. citizenship entails adherence to moral and political principles the truth of which, says the Declaration, is “self-evident†to those who reason rightly. These principles, which form what can be called the “American theory of justice,†argue for human equality; for the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; for government established by popular consent; and for the right of the people to rebel should government cease to fulfill the purposes for which it was instituted. On this basis, the United States is more than a mere address, more than its history, and more than its demographics. It is, in its essence, an idea.
Yet how many of us today, native-born no less than newly arrived immigrants, can recount the Declaration’s four self-evident truths? More crucial, how many of us have even a rudimentary grasp of the moral and intellectual foundations of the “American theory of justice� For years, surveys have told us that the answer to both questions is precious few. This cannot help but alarm those of us who believe, with the Declaration’s author, Thomas Jefferson, that no nation can expect to be “both ignorant and free.†But neither should we be surprised at the surveys’ results, says Derek Bok. The former president of Harvard University argues in his recent book, Our Underachieving Colleges, that American higher education is not providing the democratic or civic education on which he and Jefferson deem democratic health to depend.
[ . . . ]
For the sake of the integrity of both our universities and our politics — for our citizens both newly arrived and native-born — let us begin this quest, and let us do so in the civil, fair-minded, and magnanimous manner that defines university life at its noblest.
Do read the whole thing, because it’s really good — and coming from an academic, refreshingly sane. And you might be surprised at how supportive the comments are.
Entries (RSS)
Wow. I thought I was immature and easily-wounded, and then I read about Venkatesan. At least I don’t SHOW it when I’m offended by the fact that dude-in-the-back is texting instead of taking part in the discussion. And canceling classes because the students hurt your feelings - grow an epidermis, lady!
Bad evaluations sting, but sometimes that sting is there for a reason - something needs to be improved.
(Of course, I do question the validity of bad individual evaluations when 3/4 of the comments I get praise how much I taught them, or how I challenged them to do more, and then I get one or two griping about how the class was IMPOSSIBLY hard and far too much was expected of them and that I set my standards too high.)