Priya Venkatesan
Posted on 05/06/2008 9:14:19 AM PDT by Mongeaux
From the Wall Street Journal:
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.”
What were the student’s sins? They questioned some of her assertions in class!
(Excerpt) Read more at constitutionclub.wordpress.com ...
Perhaps she needs to hide under the academic feminist bubble a while more, so she won't be troubled with any questions.
This really gives me some hope that our culture isn’t lost after all.
This may close to the ultimate in “victimology”!
Well, we certainly can't have that going on in academia now can we?
Hmmm - men don’t really sue for rude students. But hiring men is not PC...
She needs to add the parents and all previous teachers in high school to her suit.
Priya Venkatesan
She does have a “Deer In The Headlights” look to her.
Stopped reading right there. Jebus, Mary and Joseph. No wonder the students went crazy enough to ask her questions!
I'm a university prof and sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get the students to question what I've said. She should feel honored that her students are actually thinking about the garbage she's pushing.
Stopped reading right there. Jebus, Mary and Joseph. No wonder the students went crazy enough to ask her questions!
I'm a university prof and sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get the students to question what I've said. She should feel honored that her students are actually thinking about the garbage she's pushing.
Read the rest for a good laugh. As a college Prof you should know how the Fems use their political muscle to push their agenda within the University. They need to do this because their basic philosophy is so irrational.
Also she had a "Double Whammy" being forced to teach crit lit which is essentially "the text as propaganda". No wonder the freshmen rebelled.
Perhaps Her Ladyship, the Professor, should become a poster on FR and learn what it means to her views challenged. She might escape with a few patches of skin left intact but no guarantees.
Ecofeminism? Priceless. LOL!
Then, after consulting a physician
Hopefully it was a shrink, she needs a good one.
It wouldn't help. She can't defend her views because they are irrational. This is why Harvard President Larry Summers was ridden out of Cambridge on a rail. When you can't defend your views you can't allow them to be questioned.
I hope she’s not teaching any class when my daughter gets there in Sept. She can argue like a champ and never take a breath (and she’s pretty conservative for a 17 y.o.)
She got a job using a degree in English and she’s still upset? Unbelievable! Most of her classmates are serving up fries.
I hope the defendants hammer her with a Rule 11 frivolous lawsuit claim.
She's a propagandist passing herself off as a professor. Real professors LONG for questions from their students. They're addicted to them, in a good way. They want the challenge, they want to be kept on their toes and they want their students to be interested in the class. Questions give the teacher hope that the students actually want to be there in the first place.
You can’t fix stupid!
“Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”Except for Man Made Global Warming. Now THAT'S some ROCK SOLID SCIENCE!
All the rest... well that's just so much social construct HOGWASH to your good ole', down-home leftist.
But Man Made Global Warming... well that's not just SCIENCE, you understand, that's ANTI-CAPITALISM, and that makes it CORRECT BY DEFINITION.
Does it create a “hostile environment” to “question authority”?
There are also several books available linking the eating of meat to the oppression of women.
Or countersue for ‘educational malpractice’ or ‘fraud’...
Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was “fascist demagoguery.”
There we have it, people! Now we know how to get rid of ultraliberal professors — become Fascist demagogues.
I’m game. You?
There we have it, people! Now we know how to get rid of ultraliberal professors — become Fascist demagogues.
I’m game. You?
Physician heal thyself.
If I were the students, I’d sue my parents for sending me to a hugely overrated, radical Leftist, Ivy League hellhole.
I’ve had my share of loser professors over the last 20+ years of “higher learning” . . . but this woman would take the prize of Loser Number One!
I recall Larry Summers’ leaving but don’t remember what he said that was so troublesome.
“Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”
If she were talking about global warming, I’d agree with her.
Yikes! Feminism really did come about so that ugly women could get jobs!
Shouldn’t she be teaching the Pakastan language?
I’m on your side, Mongeaux. By “you” I meant “you all.”
To get rid of liberal professors, what conservative wouldn’t want to wear the mantle of “Fascist demogogue,” if only for one class. I’m already considered a barbarian, a Neanderthal, and a global warming denier, so how is “Fascist demogogue” going to hurt me?
ping
"Facts" are a patriarchal construct, so it was sexist of you to spoil her brilliant analysis with such underhanded tactics. ;)
I had to do a bluebook a long time ago in Lit and one of the things I had to ‘analyze’ was a “brown study”; having not read the book, I filled many pages analyzing the construction of what was obviously B.S. from the back end of a horse but got a B anyway for ‘creativity’.
I bet she drives a “Priyas”.......
No, but a shot of Haldol in the butt sure could help!
Oh no I understand, the comment was not aimed at you, but at her.
The confusion was caused by my “newbiness.” I quoted from your source story, then commented on it. However, I don’t (yet) know how to put the quoted source in italics.
Help! How do you do it?
“When she asked me to “prove it”, I underlined the passage in my book and held it up for her to see. “
It isn’t about facts, it is about feelings. Facts are utterly meaningless if you simply choose not to accept them. Aren’t libs a hoot?
Hmmm. I was a Marxist my senior year of college back in 1988. I had a professor who was an immigrant from the Soviet Union. As you might guess, he didn’t think much of planned economies and didn’t think worker-owned firms could be successful. I questioned him a great deal and did research to prove him wrong. I nitpicked and was often very assertive. He always answered my questions and seemed to delight in the challenge.
Years later, after being out in the working world, I told him he was right about everything. To this day, he was my favorite professor.
If one is unable to think and speak clearly, and in an orderly fashion, one can not write in a clear, orderly manner; and if one is not able to do these basic things, one certainly can not effectively teach clear, orderly, concise writing skills.
PV: Sure, I am like, I really have a lot of work right now, I have two book manuscripts to work on, that doesn’t even include the manuscript about my life in higher education, I have two grants to work on, I have an article to work on, I have three articles to work on, I really have so much work to do and you would not even believe, I really have a lot of work to do. I am not the kind of person who wants to make a big fuss about petty or trivial things. So, I have a lot of things to do that I could be focusing my attention on in very productive ways.
TDR: I can understand that. If you like, I can just ask you a different question if you want.
PV: To your question, Tom Cormen was consistently rude to me and he was very unsupportive of my teaching in the Writing Program. I am perplexed as to why he would give me an offer to teach four sections in the Writing Program and then show absolutely no support, no professional support, and I wasn’t even looking for personal support, no professional support or guidance, and trying to do my best job to be a writing instructor. Now to give you the background, I taught writing in my graduate school at the University of California San Diego. I was what they call a teaching assistant. The students get graded by teaching-assistants in the research universities, not like Dartmouth where the professors grade the students. I was a teaching assistant at the University of San Diego, and I have three teaching evaluations. They were all spectacular. They were all spectacular. They were all positive. I could fax them to you. I don’t mind, I could honestly fax them to you, but no professional support or guidance from the beginning. But, I was confident in my ability to teach expository writing, so I went about it with very little support or direction from the department. That is, in itself, very unusual to have a writing program that does not have a structured orientation program for its new writing staff. Very, very extraordinary. Very out of the ordinary. Very unusual.
Someone call the waaaaaaaambulance!
She looks kind of, if you’ll excuse the expression, well, FAT. Maybe if she’d drop a few pounds she might snare a husband. :)
He had the nerve to present data which did not fit a PC agenda and then asked for further scientific inquiry rather than dismissing it in an angry marxist diatribe. He was guilty of linear western male thinking.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_women_draw_fire/
No, it’s the “I’m a bitter bitch” look.
According to Feminazi’s it is ALL due to gender bias, therefore for his heresy Larry Summers was ridden out on a rail.
I was a teaching assistant at the University of San Diego, and I have three teaching evaluations. They were all spectacular.
That's the problem right there: UCSD Vs. Dartmouth? She was way out of her academic/writing depth!
Of course, as a NH resident I might be biased...
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