(Click on the logo to return to the main blog.)

That No Professor Should Fear Ridicule
02/22/2003

As part of an assignment for a 200-level French class that I took my final year at the University of Rhode Island, I made my way to the language building's media room. I handed over my student ID and selected a TV/VCR combo at the back of the room. The movie, Chacun Cherche Son Chat ("everyone is looking for his cat"), was a light film about a young single woman looking for love. Although the chairs weren't the most comfortable, and watching an entire movie using headphones in a booth is not ideally conducive to enjoyment, I rather liked the film. I think my mind had wandered a little, perhaps reveling in my ability to understand much of the movie without the benefit of subtitles, when two naked male actors appeared on the screen, flopping about the room kissing and engaging in anal sex. "Oh," my teacher explained in class, "it's a thing they do in France: insert gratuitous sex."

I see. Boy, did I see. Apparently college students learning the French language are being made to see all over the country. And to see that they keep any objections to themselves.

Aaron Sanders, a student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, has been fired from his position with the school's student paper for daring to print the opinions of fellow students that Ridicule, a French movie that opens with a close-up of an uncircumcised penis urinating on a man in a wheelchair, mightn't be appropriate fare, particularly given that students claim that Professor Claire Goldstein didn't warn them before presenting the film in her "Text in Context" class. (Note: I think the victim of the "golden shower" is in a wheelchair, but it's been a while since I saw the film.)

The column sparked controversy, and the professoriate taught the young (conservative) punk, and any who might share his views, a lesson. French and Italian department chairman Jonathan Strauss contacted the paper's faculty adviser, professor of journalism Cheryl Heckler, who emailed the paper's editor, Jill Inkrott, to fire Sanders. Heckler also emailed Sanders personally to inform him that he had "caused greater pain to a dedicated, careful, VALUABLE professor than you can possibly comprehend." I wonder whether the professor's emphasis on the word "valuable" is meant to suggest that it is a quality that Sanders, a lowly student and hopeful journalist, might lack. As for the incomprensible pain that Goldstein apparently experienced, I also wonder what fun it could possibly be to present potentially offensive material that doesn't offend anybody enough for them to make the feeling known.

Goldstein's sensitivity to criticism points to the most disturbing aspect of the whole ordeal, even beyond the First Amendment issues involved in Sanders's firing. In an editorial response (on the department's official Web site), Strauss insinuated that Sanders — a student currently attending the university, mind you — has "a fascination" with sex — "to each his own," writes the department chair. On Erin O'Connor's Critical Mass blog, a commentor identifying himself as Norman Levitt, Mathematics, Rutgers, calls young Sanders "idiotic" and "dimwitted." It might be advisable for Professor Levitt's students not to bring up the topic, or related issues, if they disagree (such avoidance ought to be relatively easy in math studies, I would think).

In his original response, Strauss wrote, "The real issue here isn't sex; the issue is controlling people's right to express themselves and think through their opinions without undue fear." Unless, presumably, those opinions merit ad hominem ridicule on the school's Web site and, more broadly, in the academic community.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:51 PM EST