Imagine a male professor up for tenure at Amherst who was found to have been, from his dissertation on, a plagiarist. Would the article about it in the campus newspaper write sympathetically of his “struggles and insecurities with writing”? The commenter I quote in the title of this post is struck by the same thing that strikes UD: We’re supposed to soften our response to this person – a person about to be promoted to Amherst’s senior faculty – because “writing is hard for some of us.”
Women won’t get far in the face of this sort of sexism.
September 26th, 2012 at 4:31PM
The article is a satire on touchy-feeliness…right? Please?!
September 26th, 2012 at 10:04PM
“Coming from a Mexican-American background . . . .”
Perhaps this phrase explains the article better than her sex/gender does/do?
September 28th, 2012 at 8:47PM
Last night I had a chat with someone from Amherst, and it is part of what inspired today’s post at Tenured Radical. Students who cheat write articles about faculty who cheat, and it’s all supposed to be ok — something that a more nurturing academic environment would have prevented? Aaargh. I realize that the administration probably didn’t want to humiliate someone who has a lot of problems right now, but by allowing such a generous range of interpretations they are not framing this well for students at all.
September 29th, 2012 at 5:44AM
TR: Just read your column. I like the way you broaden this to the larger problem of cheating – by students and by professors – and the way you get at why it’s so destructive.