… bit of writing in the Times Higher Education from a group of professors about “the seven deadly sins of the academy.” UD‘s sister sent it her way, and she’s grateful. It’s already getting wide distribution because one of the professors, Terence Kealey, a vice- chancellor (emphasis on vice) at the University of Buckingham, in writing about the sin of lust, has done a Kinsley Gaffe and offended scads of people.
The whole thing’s worth reading – especially the stuff on snobbery and arrogance – but let’s look at Kealey’s Gaffe, with UD‘s responses in blue ink.
Clark Kerr, the president of the University of California from 1958 to 1967, used to describe his job as providing sex for the students, car parking for the faculty and football for the alumni. [Funny!] But what happens when the natural order is disrupted by faculty members who, on parking their cars, head for the students’ bedrooms?
The great academic novel of the 19th century was George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The great academic novel of the 20th century was Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man. Both books chronicle lust between male scholars and female acolytes, and I expect that the great academic novel of the 21st century will describe more of the same. So, why do universities pullulate with transgressive intercourse? [Pullulate. Wonderful. Anyone with a sense of humor knows the man means to be funny. But so few people… Oh well…]
When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he is famously said to have replied, “because that’s where the money is”. Equally, the universities are where the male scholars and the female acolytes are. Separate the acolytes from the scholars by prohibiting intimacy between staff and students (thus confirming that sex between them is indeed transgressive – the best sex being transgressive, as any married person will soulfully confirm) and the consequences are inevitable. [A convoluted way of putting it, but absolutely true. There’s a natural erotic pull of some professors toward some students, and some students toward some professors — UD speaks from experience, having had some affairs with professors when she was young. Enact rules prohibiting affairs and you tend to make them, as Kealey suggests, that much more tempting.]
The fault lies with the females. [Again, the sort of flat overstatement that should tell you he’s trying to be funny. A lot of readers don’t see it that way.] The myth is that an affair between a student and her academic lover represents an abuse of his power. What power? Thanks to the accountability imposed by the Quality Assurance Agency and other intrusive bodies, the days are gone when a scholar could trade sex for upgrades. I know of two girls who, in 1982, got firsts in biochemistry from a south-coast university in exchange for favours to a professor, but I know of no later scandals. [Over the top humor, but nothing wrong with it. And – to make a more serious point about power – only sometimes is the power concentrated in the male professor and not the female student. These relationships are complicated and diverse. UD was the aggressor in her heyday.]
But girls fantasise. This was encapsulated by Beverly in Tom Wolfe’s novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, who forces herself on to JoJo, the campus sports star, with the explanation that “all girls want sex with heroes”. On an English campus, academics can be heroes. [Put it this way, at least for wee undergrad UD. She lusted after knowledge, after the truth, and certainly she was drawn madly to men who seemed in possession of some of that.]
Normal girls – more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos – will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do? [Abnormal UD.]
Enjoy her! She’s a perk. She doesn’t yet know that you are only Casaubon to her Dorothea, Howard Kirk to her Felicity Phee, and she will flaunt you her curves. Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife. [Here’s the core of the gaffe, I guess. He speaketh absolute truth. Like Casaubon, you keep your hands off of her even as you enjoy her absurd intellectual/erotic idealization of you. The thought that this beautiful woman finds pale bespectacled you sexually hot excites you, of course; and if you take that sense of your perceived erotic power to bed with your wife and it pumps things up a bit, what’s the problem?]
Yup, I’m afraid so. As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch. Be warned by the fates of too many of the protagonists in Middlemarch, The History Man and I Am Charlotte Simmons. And in any case, you should have learnt by now that all cats are grey in the dark.
So, sow your oats while you are young but enjoy the views – and only the views – when you are older.
Anyway. If you want to read all the outrage, it’s here, in the comment thread.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:45PM
It may be worth noting that Kealey is v/c at Buckingham, the only private university in the U.K. The place is seen by most academics as being a Tory bastion (think a UK Hoover Institution) and thus hated deeply. It would not surprise the average gender studies lecturer at, say, the University of Luton, if told that at Buckingham woman were assigned as sex-slaves, and black students set to polishing the silver. Of course, the lack of humour on display would probably have erupted without this extra stimulus.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:34PM
Didn’t know that about the place, Colin. Thanks for the background.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:52PM
Buried in the very many worthwhile – or at least humorous – comments:
Terence Kealey 23 September, 2009
I thank everybody for their comments. This is a moral piece that says that middle aged male academics and young female undergraduates should not sleep together. Rather, people should exercise self-restraint. Because transgressional sex is inappropriate, the piece uses inappropriate and transgressional language to underscore the point – a conventional literary device. At a couple of places, the piece confounds expectations, another conventional literary device, designed to maintain the reader’s interest.
=============
This comment should warm the cockles of the heart of even the hard-bitten SOS.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:31PM
> Of course, the lack of humour on display would probably have erupted without this extra stimulus.
I don’t wish to enter into politics, but I wonder if UD would offer her take on the general humorlessness of the political left. People on both the left and the right often get angry about their favored issues, but I do think it’s fair to say that there’s a special kind of (schoolmarmish?!?) humorlessness that is particularly characteristic of some people on the left end of the spectrum. Me, I don’t understand politics, so I depend on folks like UD to ‘splain it to me.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:23PM
My facebook has been buzzing with the angst of female Irish academics (no English so far). No notion of the humour. And, yes, they’re all on the political left. Sigh.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:28PM
Well, RJO, I have my own rather odd take on the humorlessness on view in this case. To me these people are not people of the left, if by left we mean culturally radical; they are culturally conservative, protecting a general view of women in their late teens and twenties as helpless innocent victims of powerful lust-ridden men.
I know of a female professor who takes her boyfriends from among the grad students in her program. Is she a powerful lust-ridden woman, and are her boyfriends helpless innocent victims?
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:05PM
But if that’s true, what’s the psychological basis of the humorlessness in particular? And why do these folks self-identify as left/liberal/progressive if in fact they’re culturally conservative as you suggest? Why would people who self-identify as right/conservative be able to appreciate humor more than those who self identify as left/liberal?
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:45PM
“I’m not beglamoured by tormented souls. I feel for them, but I don’t think that’s the best way to live,” says Adam Phillips in an interview.
I think some academics beglamour torment, being tormented. Leaves no room for laughter.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:42PM
I couldn’t disagree more about the humorlessness of the left, or at least of liberals. Funniest filmmaker of the past 30 years: Woody Allen, liberal (though culturally conservative in certain ways); funniest stand-up (my own opinion here): Eddie Izzard, liberal; funniest British TV show: Monty Python, all liberals; funniest American TV show: Seinfeld, I’m guessing liberal, (certainly Larry David is); funniest recent British sitcom: The Office, Ricky Gervais, liberal; funniest recent American TV: The Daily Show, liberal; The Colbert Report, liberal. The right had a good first half of the century as regards literature (eg Kingsley Amis), but there are so few writers you would describe as conservative now … Where are all these funny right-wingers? If you know of any (and PJ O’Rourke is waaay past his sell-by date) send them along …
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:18PM
The reason I quoted Kealey is that from his own words he appears to be culturally conservative. Nevertheless, he writes a hilarious piece that appears inappropriate and transgressive because, as he says, middle aged academics and young female undergraduates sleeping together is transgressive.
Thus he might be an example of Stuart’s right-winger with a sense of humor – at least culturally.
UD’s female colleague and her graduate student boyfriends may not qualify for the transgressive label. If the boyfriend is in her course, the shoe may fit.
Ducks.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:32PM
Stuart: I think the humorless group here is a small subset of the left. Radical, it has a certain contempt for liberals…. – These are academic leftists of the sort Richard Rorty attacked, for instance, for being over-theoretical. The group returned the favor by attacking Rorty for being nothing more than a liberal, etc.
Think Fredric Jameson.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:43AM
Terrence Kealey . He used to work in the area of epithelial transport, and did some work on cystic fibrosis in his earlier days. His lab then had major funding from Unilever to work on dermatological products. He was very popular at Unilever and I’m sure that they are very happy with the work he did for them
Since that time he has increasingly made his living / reputation from winding people up by taking contrary, right wing views on almost anything. He was a staunch defender of Thatcher’s education policies and has written several books that are highly critical of the way UK science is funded. (Do a web search).
At one point he was proposing the scraping of all research councils, and saying that any UK academic who receives research funding from a charity or an industry should get the same amount of government funding to do what he wants with. No checks no targets nothing.
As people have said, Buckingham is a bit of an anomaly in the UK as it is a private University that is outside of the mainstream higher education sector. It has a reputation for being staffed by right wing contrarians.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:21PM
The fault lies with the females. [Again, the sort of flat overstatement that should tell you he’s trying to be funny. A lot of readers don’t see it that way.] The myth is that an affair between a student and her academic lover represents an abuse of his power. What power? Thanks to the accountability imposed by the Quality Assurance Agency and other intrusive bodies, the days are gone when a scholar could trade sex for upgrades. I know of two girls who, in 1982, got firsts in biochemistry from a south-coast university in exchange for favours to a professor, but I know of no later scandals. [Over the top humor, but nothing wrong with it.
I’m sure I’m a humorless liberal, but I’m still not seeing how that’s funny. Part of it, I think, is because he tries to prove his point with some BS evidence about a 1982 example. "What power?" is funny. But if it’s humor, why bother with (weak) evidence at all? Be MORE trangressive, by rejecting proof and examples. The first sentence is a massive overstatement—IMO, he’d be better off skipping it and jumping directly to the myth. Then following up on intrusiveness, perhaps ending, eg: "with professors hemmed in by workshops on sexual harrassment and open door policies, it must be the female’s fault."
I think the overall tone and underlying assumptions about women are also kind of icky. Little sense of female students as scholars–they are flaunting themselves for grades, UD’s notion of the sexiness of knowledge is oblique and obscured. Does he *know* any female students? because, again, he’s leaning on a BS example for "girls fantasise"—he couldn’t have found a real-life memoir by a woman to use, instead of a Tom Wolfe novel? or just invented a scenario? Also, totally ignored the existence of female professors or any temptation posed by the young men to men/women alike (and surely there’s lots of room for humor there).
Anyhow, I’m open to the concepts as funny, but I’m not impressed by this particular execution.
Re humorlessness on the left—I think it’s more about cultural studies, which places much weight on small things. One of the basic tenets of notions of construction of gender, etc, is that jokes, the way people talk, labels used, etc *matter*. So yeah, the "old boys club" tone of this piece makes it not funny.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:44PM
I take your points, dance, and agree with most of them. Other pieces in the Times thing were funnier (the ones on snobbery and arrogance in particular, as I recall); this piece, as I suggested, clearly intends to be funny and over the top (and therefore shouldn’t be attacked as if it’s a serious set of propositions about a situation). It fails in places for precisely the reason you suggest — he wavers between flat-out satire and something else.
I also agree with what you seem to be suggesting about the lack of humor in parts of the left — In citing Rorty’s impatience with over-theorizing, I meant to get at the same thing. It’s totally not funny and totally not pleasant to be among grim, hyper-self-conscious people constantly patrolling what everyone in the room is saying and doing.
September 27th, 2009 at 1:07PM
totally not pleasant to be among grim, hyper-self-conscious people constantly patrolling what everyone in the room is saying and doing.
Just by the way: actual quote from recent meeting of faculty, about diversity of student body:
"What about the Orientals? They’re not called….Asians."
Reaction of hyper-self-conscious liberals in the room who study race, imperialism, and diaspora and *believe* in the importance of language: we looked at each other, eyebrow-shrugged, and tried to hide our smiles. (Well, and I wrote it down verbatim in my notes). Because the speaker’s been teaching there since I was born. In my experience, the guns only come out for people *who should know better*—like, for instance, a university president and a Times editor.