There is an inherent competitive hostility (even with/against a student’s professor/instructor) because it is The Ivys. Then add in the “naturally” socialized prejudices/biases and argumentative predilections of young people who are in fact untutored and unschooled but believe themselves already perfectly brilliant – after all they were valedictorian of their school or whatever – and you have a recipe for some often very difficult classroom moments as an instructor/professor of color. And being a woman can often make things ten times worse! Heck, in discussing teaching pedagogy, we have to make sure we cover the chapter titled:

“How to deal with an extremely stubborn and hostile student who is targeting you for harassment – probably/possibly due to race or gender – in a neutral and diplomatic fashion”

And this is even if you are teaching something very rote and basic and widely accepted. In the past with difficult students, teaching simple reading/writing techniques, I have had to literally blanket the table/desk at the front of the classroom in paper/texts from other, respected, published, usually White sources that echo whatever I’ve been trying to teach, just to get students to lay off! Even now I can hear myself saying, “Look, Plato started doing this first, not me, and that’s why the university feels it is important for you to learn.” Sigh. It can drive one insane.

That said, I have pity on her, although I think she only made things worse with all this lawsuit business. She just should have written it off as a bad semester and moved on! You can’t win every group over every term.

http://www.ripoffreport.com

Please TELL people about the site.

This is going to be the way students go way beyond the silly Rate My Professor site and get to enter the prof’s name in the keyword search section of that title box (use words like: So-and-So Taught Thus-and-Such at X Cost to Student, Prof Did Thus and Such).

Instantly, their name will appear on the internet at the top of the search listings on Google.

And THEN we’ll see how many students start getting nasty emails threatening lawsuits over difference of opinion on the course content. THEN we’ll see what the Priya Venkatesans of Whackademia (because half of them are, indeed, crazy) do in their classes once their names are all over the internet.

This site is even FASTER than complaining to Fox News Channel to see if they’ll cover it. It’ll hit Google search pronto.

Tell fellow students about the site. It’s a Godsend for abused students.

For those who want an easy jargon-free introduction to these ideas, I’d recommend the last five chapters of Lee Smolin’s ‘The Trouble with Physics’. If you don’t trust humanities profs can take heart: its written by a physicist, and a well-respected one at that. Though most of what he says is derived from Feyeraband, Kuhn, Popper, etc.

commonsense,

attributes his success due to strange imaginations while driving thru california etc. but sure, this would not have been possible had he not been picked up by Cetus where he found an institutional setting that made possible for his “wild imaginations” to become real, institutionally speaking….

Yes, I know this is hugely important and I’m always more aware of it when travelling in India. Think of the many einsteins there must be hidden away in those villages who barely get to go to school. However, when it comes down to a discussion about the construction of science vis-a-vis the construction of the social sciences, I’m not convinced if this is a significant point (to use your handy word). It’s just a trivial truth about anything in life, imo, and the junk sciences cannot simply use this to validate their status or to drag the purer sciences down to their level.

Wildcat, you seem to be unduly exercised by long dead (not intellectually) Freud. It’s not a question of proving or disproving him thru neroscience! Some of Freud’s ideas are very important and useful. I don’t have the time to expand on this, but, those who find his ideas intriguing, will apply them. If you can’t stand him, best to stay away from him. Rather than instigating us to create a stink about him in the media!! Academics are already a reasonably pilloried lot and surely, whatever damage they may or may not do, the dmage inflicted even by “kooky” French narrative theory or “postmodernism”, pales in comparison to the havoc wrought and to be wrought by our politicians and much of mainstream media. So, you are, in all seroiusness, asking us to alert the media about the alleged damage wrought by Freud? (Actually, I don’t want this to become a debate or argument, so I’ll leave it there…..pretty convenient huh? slimily giving myself the last word!!)

I go to Northwestern, and word is that it’s possible that the news broke after she’d already been hired.

Not sure if that’s true, or not, but if they hired her for a research position (have heard she’s in the nanotech area doing some type of research, but not teaching writing as far as I know), then perhaps she’s at least capable of doing some type of lab work, the kooky “French narrative theory” in what was supposed to be a writing class aside.

By the way, if the media covering academia follies ever read these comments, please…I beg of you…do some reporting on the crank Freudian theory that some in the humanities and social sciences are still upholding as valid. It’s pure bunk (being disproved by modern neuroscience), but we had some nutcase licensed clinical psychologist teach a psych class, and he was acting like Freud was correct. Baloney!

Please…people will continue to believe this bunk unless the MSM does more reporting on the more weirded out stuff some of these academic cranks are into.

Postmodernism is scary, yes, but please report on Freud. I beg of you. Some idiot tried to infer that someone might be suicidal (at least in thought, even if not in actual behavior) just because they wanted to report on some literary figure who had all kinds of issues with alcohol and other stuff. They thought that if you had an interest in the subject, it meant something of deep personal significance. That’s just insane theory, and yet they have licensed psychologists teaching this crap.

Get to the Freud-bashing, please! Chop chop.