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Thursday, December 01, 2005
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Gotta give her points for honesty. In the aftermath of a drunken Tufts student’s violent and bigoted attack on a policewoman [see UD], an adjunct professor of English there expresses her bitterness against students in her classes who don’t like her self-described “insist[ence] on raising issues of social inequality and cultural politics in our classrooms, perhaps ad infinitum to some of your ears.” Students must stop resisting her “overtly, perhaps uncomfortably, political discussions in the classroom.” Apparently this form of student resistance is a general source of faculty irritation in her department: she describes herself recently “sitting in my East Hall office with some of my colleagues, discussing Tufts students' resistance to conversations about racial, class, gender and sexual inequalities.” “The next time you are sitting in class, rolling your eyes when your professor ‘whines about feminism,’ or, in analyzing ongoing racism and colonialism ‘blows things out of proportion’ or ‘overreacts,’ or, (most cardinal of American sins) says something ‘communist,’” [communist?] just remember that you too are part of the same sick country that produced that guy. “Take advantage,” she pleads, “of the opportunity we present to understand the world that shapes you,” the violent bigotry that “characterizes our culture.” “[T]his is what some of us, your professors, have been trying - and often struggling - to get you students to see.” |