Teaching tools have apparently become more exotic since the days of slide rules and overhead projectors. When his freewheeling pedagogical style landed him, effectively, in the Dean’s office, International Relations professor Arthur N. Gilbert found himself making what, for many, would be embarrassing admissions. For example, the tenured University of Denver associate professor “explained that he brings in an old, art-deco vibrator in [sic] lecturing students on gender-related differences in attitudes toward masturbation and masculine self-control in the late 19th century,” Peter Schmidt reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education in the issue that comes out on November 4, 2011....