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Northwestern Professor Runs Afoul of the Title IX Mob

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by doctorquant, Jun 2, 2015.

  1. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Let's stay away from the issues surrounding unequal-power dilemmas, otherwise someone might make the connection that a President having sex with a much younger intern isn't just consensual sex that should be ignored by all but the most prude among us.
     
  2. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    As long as it circles back to Bill Clinton in one way or another, I'm happy.
     
  3. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    Jesus, YankeeFan, its become a "Judge Wapner at 5:00" thing with you.
     
    YankeeFan likes this.
  4. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Hey man, I'm just saying, there's no better example of the unequal-power dilemma than the President of the United States getting a bj under the desk in his office, from a young, portly, unpaid intern.

    It's the kind of thing that usually makes feminists and other sexual conduct zealots crazy. Regardless of the "consensual" nature of the activity, they would brand the man to be a predator, and the woman to be a victim.

    Oddly, that's not the case here.

    Yet, I'm supposed to be outraged by "rape culture" and every sexual act that occurs on campus between white college students and/or their professors.
     
  5. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    Vox had a liberal professor weigh in (anonymously) on this phenomenon as well: liberals eating their own.

    I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me - Vox

    I don't know what to think. Maybe it is a generation of coddling and helicopter parenting come home to roost. I do think certain people revel in being offended and outraged by stuff that challenges their sensitive nature, but Kipins erred in that original essay by making a pretty sloppy error in weaving two different cases (one of rape; one of a relationship gone bad) into one argument. And then she was a jerk about it when called on it. But I agree on some level with her point that kids who insist they need a rule in the the student handbook about not dating professors are acting as if they have no say in the matter, than they're powerless lambs being preyed upon by wolves in adjuncts clothing.

    Everyone believes they are a customer, which probably says a lot about both the cost and the current state of higher education. So they wanted to be treated like a customer, and if they aren't satisfied, or if they're challenged in a way that hurts their feelings, a grievance feels like the only way to be heard. If you're getting upset because a professor wants the class to read Mark Twain, and this, to you, is evidence of patriarchal oppression and systematic racism, I think life is going to be hard for you. But at least all 200 of your blog followers will give you congratulatory daps when you call out The Man.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2015
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    DD, Customers essentially vote with their pocketbooks. If you aren't happy with a service provider, you don't do business with it. I'd take it from that line of thinking, and what he wrote in the essay,, that the fear is that all the sensitivity and how it is indulged is going to put a chill on higher education. ... and the customers are going to be able to dictate curriculum more and more.

    The thing is, that kind of bizarro world will only play itself so far, if history is a guide -- just as all attempts at censorship (provided it isn't being enforced by a dictator with an army) always get derailed by reason. MOST customers of a higher education are not just looking to have their sensitivities catered to or to have their beliefs or notions affirmed. There will always be a place for institutions of higher learning that cater to customers, or students, who are actually interested in learning free of that nonsense. And there will always be a majority of those customers who are buying the education as a means to making themselves more marketable doing whatever it is they are there to learn. The inmates can only run the asylum so far, before the school becomes a joke to the employers those majority of customers want to impress with their degree. And when that happens, the schools that didn't compromise to any large degree are the ones that will maintain their standing.

    The original story was about Northwestern. A pretty good school. In the end, there was a soap opera around it and a lot of handwringing, but reason did win out. At a school like that, I would expect that to be the result most of the time. It can't afford for it not to be the result and expect to keep the reputation that is what the majority of its customers, or students, are actually buying. At lower-tier schools, filled with marginal students? I don't expect that to be the outcome. They will sell themselves out, and cater to whatever keeps tuition revenue coming in for as long as they can keep their doors open. But so what?
     
    Jeff likes this.
  7. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Yep. Liberals are becoming worried by the world they created:

    I don't think Kipnis was ever in a great deal of jeopardy. Any sanction against her on these facts would have been very hard to sustain in the face of any capable legal challenge in her defense. But that's not the point. The very idea that a professor could be hit with a Title IX investigation over an opinion article she wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education is so palpably ridiculous that there is simply no need to go further.

    There may be some excuse for Northwestern itself inasmuch as they appear to have believed that they had no choice but to mount the investigation into the student complaints. But if that's the case, that just means the current case law and procedures have just gone completely off the rails.

    I strongly recommend reading the piece in question, which you can read here. I think it's fair to say that Kipnis writes breezily about teacher-student relationships and skeptically about two high-profile harassment/assault incidents on her own campus. For this to constitute 'retaliation' in the sense in which the term is generally known in workplace discrimination law is to pull the terms out of all relation to their meaning to the point of making them ridiculous.


    Thoughts on The Kipnis Clown Show and the Drama of University Life
     
  8. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    The sky must actually be falling. I agree with this 100 percent.
     
  9. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    Going to be one of those days hey Yankeefan.
     
  10. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Nah, I have a busy afternoon planned.
     
    JC likes this.
  11. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Reason winning out most of the time is a pretty low standard, wouldn't you say?
     
  12. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    This thread is almost as exciting as the UAB threads.
     
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