An F for Academic Freedom

Paul Jacob’s Common Sense:

Podcast

Just “being a professor” doesn’t make you smarter than your students. Or more grounded in reality. Or common sense.

Take Priya Venkatesan, a Dartmouth academic who teaches a class in something-or-other to do with science, postmodernism and higher or lower consciousness or something.

She is suing some of her former students. Why? Maybe it’s like climbing Mount Everest: You do it to see if you can. And this professor apparently thinks modern anti-discrimination laws entitle her to go after students simply for criticizing her teaching.

Roger Kimball has the scoop over at PajamasMedia.com. He quotes Professor V’s minatory email to her students. In it she merely says she is suing “some of you” under Title VII of what she blunderingly calls “anti-federal” discrimination laws. She obviously didn’t like her students’ class evaluations, which she ominously says she will reproduce in a book.

Don’t wait for her to find a publisher. Many of the evaluations have already found their way onto the Internet. Typical criticisms include “awful,” “nonsensical,” “worst course ever.” Sure, we can’t know the quality of her teaching for certain without trekking to Dartmouth and sitting in. But from her course description and her email’s grammar and logic I’m willing to credit the students’ insights.

More I shan’t say, as I don’t wish to be named in Professor V’s lawsuit. My lawyer is overworked already.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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