… an email a law professor sent to one of his or her students.
UD should say that there’s no sourcing on this email. The blog Above the Law doesn’t identify its origins – school, professor, student. But someone sent the email to the blog, and the blog wrote about it, and I’m going to assume that the incident and the email are for real.
Background: A tenured law professor at an American university said some things in class that a student found offensive. The student complained to the Dean of Students. The professor now writes to the student:
I got an email yesterday from the dean that a student in this class complained that I have not been letting you out of class promptly at 10:20 and that I made off-handed, non-PC references to Parkinson’s and ADD. First, let me say that I will try to be more aware of both these matters.
But seriously – did you really have to go to the dean to complain? Not that after 30 years of teaching it has any negative influence on my job approval or the dean’s appreciation for what I do but don’t you think you are old enough to fight your own battles? Don’t you think I am receptive enough to be addressed directly? Are you going to go to momma and poppa if a partner at a law firm treats you wrongly? Seriously??
SOS says: This email begins promisingly enough. The writer is straightforward, direct, non-pretentious. Non-PC is a bit on the defensive side, but let it go. The professor is good enough to try to be more aware, etc.
As with the press release from the nightclub (see the post directly below this one), the writer should have stopped here. Good writing is in part about getting out while the getting’s good. One way to think about this is: What exactly do you want to say to the person or group reading what you’ve written? What exactly? Otherwise, what do you want to get off your chest? Take out all of the chesty stuff. Write with your head voice, not your chest voice.
A professor might legitimately want to convey to a student the importance of fighting your own battles. But this – and, actually, everything else in this email – would have been better conveyed in person.
I mean, if the point of this email is that the student should deal as directly as possible with human conflict, why is the professor making matters worse by writing this down? If the professor wants to claim that he/she’s “receptive enough to be addressed directly,” why not extend that courtesy to the student, and simply talk to him/her after class or something? Inevitably, an email from a professor is going to be more intimidating than sitting down and chatting like a human being.
But the really big bad in this email, of course, happens here:
Not that after 30 years of teaching it has any negative influence on my job approval or the dean’s appreciation for what I do…
UD hates the word inappropriate. But this is so that. All the professor does here is betray his/her anxiety/grandiosity… I’d call it infantile…. A sort of nyah-nyah. Not exactly the sort of thing to reassure the student that this professor is receptive.
September 24th, 2011 at 5:14PM
Yay SOS! I’ve missed her! Please bring her back more often.
September 24th, 2011 at 6:36PM
Thank you, Jonathan. I’ve wondered where she’s been. Not enough interestingly bad prose around or something.
September 26th, 2011 at 3:54PM
I did something similar to what this law student did in my third year of law school. My corporations teacher subjected us to a speech about the bad policy of the United States in Lebanon in late 1983. I was mad. The class had a mandatory attendance policy. I spent most of the speech writing an angry note to the dean. I actually agreed with some of the things the teacher said. But I thought his behavior was inappropriate. My thoughts were “I’m a grown-up (26 at the time), I read the paper and can make up my mind about this topic. By the way, it has little to do with the law of corporations in the United States”
The dean had me in for a little chat a couple of weeks later. I was not the only complainer. I did not go to the teacher for fears of academic retaliation. I still wonder what I would have said. The nicest thing I can think of now is “Stick to corporations asshole.” The teacher was also a jerk when not pontificating about international relations