Dartmouth's 'Hostile' Environment

[didymus]

tinyurl.com/5chdr6

Dartmouth’s ‘Hostile’ Environment

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their “anti-intellectualism” violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will “name names.”

. . . . .

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful,” she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. “They’d argue with your ideas.” This caused “subversiveness,” a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan’s scholarly specialty is “science studies,” which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, “teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth.” She continues: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”

Another lawsuit from a victim who got their widdle feewings hurted. If I were a judge I don’t know if I’d laugh or throw my gavel at this woman.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Ms. Venkatesan’s scholarly specialty is “science studies,” which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, “teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth.” She continues: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”

I guess there are a few IDers in academia…

Postmodernists share with IDers, a decided aversion to reality-based thinking. For them, conclusions based on evidence are just yucky.

Having had to sit though one of these presentations in a seminar, vibrating with suppressed laughter, I can sympathize with the students.

Undergraduates may be uninformed, but they aren’t idiots.

 

[The_Barbarian]

If you’d like to write your own postmodernist thesis, go here:
elsewhere.org/pomo/

It automatically generates complete nonsense in the style of modern literary deconstruction. If you don’t like the one you get, hit the refresh button, and another is generated.

And it’s indistinguishable from those written seriously by these “intellectuals.”

I have to say, though, that when I was in college, one had to earn that designation by doing some serious academic work.

Enjoy.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

That is what you get when Liberal Relativists are in charge of the college. Only their ideas are allow and you are not allowed to challenge them.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was “fascist demagoguery.” Then, after consulting a physician about “intellectual distress,” she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

Ummm… The real Fascist here is her. I hope they counter sue both the teacher and the college.

 

[The_Barbarian]

The woman seems to be a nincompoop. That being said, there comes a time when questioning crosses the line into disrespect, and attempts to derail the class.

And at that point, it becomes a typical fascist response; trying to shout down ideas they don’t like. No different than those radical feminists mentioned in this forum earlier. I have no idea which way this particular case went, but I’d sure like to see a video of the classes to see.

 

[mdgspencer]

If she doesn’t have tenure, it is likely that she will be fired, which would not be a bad idea, if this story is accurate.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

That is what you get when Liberal Relativists are in charge of the college. Only their ideas are allow and you are not allowed to challenge them.

She’s not in charge of the college, but teaches there.

Dartmouth, as far as I’ve seen, leans toward the conservative side of issues.

Jim

 

[Nickkname]

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world.

I thought news stories were suppost to be neutral?