Background: In my blog posts Dartmouth Students Rebel Against Feminist Professor's Manbashing, She Reacts by....Suing Her Students! (Part I) and Part II, I explained how a group of Dartmouth students rebelled against a feminist professor and her manbashing. The professor, rather than engaging in debate, pretended to be a victim, cancelled classes for a week, scurried off to another school to teach, and said she is going to sue her students.

Maureen O'Connor of the IvyGate blog writes:

"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 www.thedartmouth.com, 'cancellation 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."

Let's see, the feminist professor is suing her students for questioning her views, and she has the goddamn gall to complain about being the victim of "intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression." Wow.

O'Connor calls the professor "Litigious and Passive-Aggressive." That certainly seems apt.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Feminism/NOW, Women's Studies. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.