http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050425/ap_on_re_us/threatened_by_poetry The poem in question is post 8 on this Free Republic thread. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1391122/posts
While it is true that with the man/woman thing, the woman is usually right about 99% of the time, clearly this is a case of an abusive professor who insists on free speech for herself but denies same to herself. How Dworkinesque/MacKinnonesque!
Bypassing the liberal academia slant here, I have to say I feel sorry for anyone who has to read that stuff. "Her department was English, a liberal art, Where the halls did moan when Bush won again. She hated economists who said, “Liberals aren't Qualified to accuse Bush of zero sum games.” Those economists were enemies, she hated to heart. “To quantify feelings is a profession so lame!” Kerry was plastered on her new tan office. She was his lover as well a true fan of his." Yack, gag.
She could have given the guy an F and scribbled some marginal notes as to why the above is bad poetry. (I'm no judge of good and bad poetry - I just don't have that much taste for poetry anyway, and my last attempt was in Mrs. Wiley's 10th grade English class, in 1978!) But file formal charges with the university? Outrageous! The fact that the university even felt such charges were worthy of further investigation is reprehensible!
Sure... It's only outrageous until a similar situation happens and is not reported and the teacher gets raped, then the mantra is "if she felt threatened, why didn't she tell someone?" If you want to threaten a professor, how ever clever you think you are doing it, you should be confronted by the authorities. The punk student should be prosecuted.
TH: "Dworkinesque"? As in the jurisprude? Why do you say that? I am in the middle of trying to make sense of "Law's Empire" for my Jurisprudence course, which is why I ask.
Re: Sure... Clearly, the prof allowed her imagination run wild! Exactly how does a poem about having consexual sex with the 18-year-old daughter of a fictive English professor constitute a threat to molest the 3-year-old daughter of a real-life English professor or that real-life English professor herself? The professor could have: (a) kept copies of his poetry herself and (b) asked him to meet her in her office in order to confront him privately about the situation. But ruin a young man's life by letting one's imagination run wild and making false allegations? Clearly, this is a situation in which some rich white pseudo-liberal pseudo-intellectual has been exposed as a racist. ("Dark-complected men are dangerous, aren't they?" seems to be an underlying myth bought into by far too many in white society.) Or maybe you think the student should have written either at the end or the beginning of the poem: "This poem is entirely fictive. Any resemblance between the characters in this poem and actual real-life individuals is purely coincidental."
By "Dworkinesque/MacKinnonesque," I refer to Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, two radical feminist theorists (and law profs as well, I believe) who have as a major thread running through their teaching, thought, and writings: "All of heterosexual relations are by definition rape."
The guy was obviously having some fun at his prof's expense, let's not kid ourselves. The prof probably overreacted, but I must admit if one of my students penned a cute little poem about a Government and Business Law professor and engaging in sex with his wife and daughter, I'd feel that this was a young man with a very stunted sense of propriety and decency, and I'd tell him he was lucky I wasn't a violent person.
Well, Political Science and Business Administration are, shall we say, a bit less avant garde disciplines than, say, English and Poetry.
TH: Thanks for the clarification. Your post reminds me of Al Frankin's comment that he knows only one feminist that considers all heterosexual sex as rape...and he's been married to HER for twenty years! (drum riff)
You're quite right there, although the Federal courts seem intent on making Business Law rather avant garde and postmodern as well, but that's a debate for another day. I still think that decency and consideration for other human beings shouldn't be checked at the door regardless of disciplines. Think of it: you're a 36 year old father of two (this is the decidedly non-traditional student in question); at some point in penning this little gem don't you maybe think "Well, I've gotten that out of my system, blasted liberal profs anyway..." and toss the thing in the direction of the nearest wastebasket? Shouldn't a 36 year old man have some sort of internal idiot alarm which tells him "Don't do this, you idiot!" It was the type of thing you might overlook with an 18 year old zealot, but I think the prof was right to be concerned under the circumstances.
I'm no fan of Franken's politics, but I gotta admit the guy's clever. He was responsible, as much as just about anyone, for the success of the original Saturday Night Live; he was a writer for them.
(1) Exactly how is B-Law becoming avant garde? (2) Well, you've got to expect this sort of thing from disciplines that attract avant garde bohemian types. (3) Well, I'm a 43-year-old father of zero. If you will press the profile button in the bottom left part of your screen and then press review all posts on the upper right part of the next screen, you will find that my own idiot alarm has failed to go off a few times (especially when, due to brokeness, I've left getting new meds slide, thereby allowing my blood pressure, diabetes, and manic-depression to get entirely out of control).
Ted: The law has become increasingly avant garde as judges have ignored longstanding precedent, or looked across the Atlantic for it, in search of whatever progressive, cutting edge legal principles satisfy their personal preferences. The law has gone for quite a wild ride in the last 70 years! I'm 40 and the father of five, and I'd venture that you'd have a host of posters on this forum who would vouch for the occasional defect in my idiot alarm. However, that doesn't mean I don't get called to task for it, as did--and should--the alarm-deprived 36 year old student in question. You're probably right that this sort of thing is to be expected from "those types", but that doesn't mean some aren't potentially dangerous; Hitler was self-admittedly quite the bohemian as an underemployed 20-something second-rate painter.
A similar thing happened a year or so ago at San Francisco's Academy of Art University. (Accredited by ACICS and NASAD, a WASC applicant and perhaps the world's biggest player in DL art programs.) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/25/MNGI85QTK11.DTL An art student in writing class submitted a short story about a serial killer and child molester. Reportedly the story had little or no plot and was just a series of extremely graphic descriptions of some very sick things. The teacher went to her department chairman and the thing went up the chain to the school's president. Next thing, the San Francisco police were interviewing the student, he was expelled and put on a plane back to his parents. Then it turned out that the teacher had been assigning some rather edgy readings about sado-masochism, and her contract wasn't renewed. I don't know... There's a certain kind of artist who believes that it is part of art's purpose to challenge, to offend, to be provocative, to break boundaries, to be outrageous. But if that's the purpose and the goal, then nobody should feign surprise when people are predictably outraged and offended. That was the whole point. We've seen it before when artists smeared shit on the Virgin Mary and submerged a crucifix in urine. Actually, I can kind of understand the artists' purpose, sometimes. Feces and urine symbolize the fallen world of sin more viscerally and immediately than any of the old art-historical cliches. People looking at Piss-Christ really have to face the question of whether stuff like urine (or worse) has the power to taint the cross. But doing that kind of thing successfully (leaving aside the question of whether these works were successful) calls for some pretty keen judgement, something that's often in short supply among adolescents. I guess that bottom line, art can be dangerous. If an artist is too edgy, he or she might get end up being the one who gets sliced.
I went to UG for art. Knew a guy in classes who swore that in another art school he'd gone to, the following occurred: 1. Talented but odd student has his paintings criticized incessantly by prof; 2. Student decides to "teach prof a lesson"; 3. Student goes home after classes one day and defecates and urinates on canvas; 4. Student strides into class the following day with the revolting canvas in tow, expecting that prof will be thoroughly disturbed; 5. Prof beams with satisfaction: "There, you've got it! Brilliant passion on this canvas, etc, etc..." Kind of blew up in the student's face; you can't get any weirder than some of these academics.
And what did this professor expect? This reminds me of a time when, as an undergrad, a female friend of mine who was in a school drama production invited a female friend and me to see her in the play, "Offending the Audience." The female student who attended the play told me she was offended. (Or was she just joking around?)
