He was a great professor, and really really quirky in a good way. He and another older colleague would sit in the departmental lounge and have a “conversation” that went: “Oh, today is January 13th. It’s the anniversary of Emile Zola publishing ‘j-accuse.’” And the other would say “Huh. It’s also the anniversary of Johnny Cash recording ‘Folsom Prison’ in 1968.” And they’d keep this game up for a half an hour, and nobody would want to sit in the room because they’d look at you expectantly.
Then I got busted doing a spot-on imitation of him and some of his best quirks. He caught me, after walking around a corner and hearing me. With a sly smile, “I guess this means you’ll be registering for my intellectual history seminar in the fall, and no doubt be able to lead it,” and walked off.
I’m assuming pure racism there, but I have seen that college counselors will lower expectations for almost all students because they are judged by how many students apply and then get in – anywhere – so if they convince your kid to only apply to easy-entry options that’s an automatic win for them. Why they don’t suggest a mixture, I don’t know, but I can confirm that my daughters were both strongly encouraged to NOT apply to the schools they ended up going to, because the counselor thought it was too risky for her stats.
Haven’t seen the story on the Hamline University firing here yet, but from everything I’ve read this seems like the school administration reacted very poorly and then doubled down. If medieval Islamic devotional paintings can’t be shown in a course on historic global art (an appropriate academic setting if there ever was one) and even after there were warnings about the content in advance for anyone who might be offended or want to skip it, then that’s a serious curb on academic freedom and an erasure of a whole swath of history.
My oldest son went to a country HS, got bored and was a bit of a handful. The GC tried everything to talk him out of going to college. He went, did well, and is doing fine now. He just didn’t fit the mold. And only about 20% of grads went to college. Doctor’s kid, white kid. Asshole GC.
Oh, it was of the worst kind. Picture Stephen from Django Unchained, and you’ll get an idea of how Mr. G behaved. Not sure how he managed to keep his job after all the complaints, but he made a lot of extra work for some parents and students. Had to check behind him to make sure transcripts and other required papers weren’t late or mysteriously “lost” en route to schools, etc. Would not be at all surprised if he was supposed to keep the diversity numbers in an “acceptable” range, too.
Ours was mostly interested in getting kids to focus on a minimal number of subjects they had some chance of passing, so they didn’t leave with absolutely no qualifications. He had absolutely no clue what to do with someone who passed all their subjects and already knew they wanted to go to uni.
Yep, but in my opinion it certainly doesn’t help the administration’s (or student’s) case for firing the professor over this. I mean, it was clearly spelled out in the course syllabus that these images would be shown, and why. There was plenty of warning that the images would be shown and ample opportunities to opt out of viewing them. Nobody can reasonably claim that they were “blindsided” by the inclusion in the course.
I was specifically responding to this sentence in the linked article:
But yeah, it’s quite clear from the rest of the article that she doesn’t think there’s any appropriate way to display the image, period. Which is an opinion she’s welcome to hold personally but shouldn’t be used to limit the academic study of others.
CAIR-MN executive director Jaylani Hussein said most Muslims around the world oppose the public display of images of the Prophet Muhammad. To show the image of the Prophet, said Hussein, is deeply offensive. And he called that violation of the prohibition an act of Islamophobia. And he said it doesn’t matter that the instructor warned students before she showed the image.
That’s kind of like firing a culinary instructor for including a lesson about the handling and preparation of pork (while providing ample opportunity for Jewish and Muslim students to opt out).
*“Although we strongly discourage showing visual depictions of the Prophet, we recognize that professors who analyze ancient paintings for an academic purpose are not the same as Islamophobes who show such images to cause offense. Based on what we know up to this point, we see no evidence that Professor Erika López Prater acted with Islamophobic intent or engaged in conduct that meets our definition of Islamophobia…
Academics should not be condemned as bigots without evidence or lose their positions without justification.
That is a much more reasonable take. It sounds like the CAIR-MN chapter is a little out of step with the national organization. Or perhaps some folks just got quoted out of context.
