This course required that students
create
what they thought was a piece of
pornography. The university
President had a glut of critical
Emails, especially after
conservative talk show “gurus”
tongue-lashed the university, the
instructor, and the students who
defended the class
(“inexperienced, unenlightened,
dependent yet arrogant”). One
alumnus, a headmaster, said the
course should simply have been
removed, and compared the situation
to one at Harvard, where the
president forced resignation of
an administrator who was
discovered to have pornography
on his campus computer.
The course instructor, presently
on sabbatical, may wish to teach
the course when she returns. If
so, the college president has
said, the course will be subject
to peer review. “The decision to
include production of pornography
could have benefitted from more
collegial consultation from departments
and programs.” This
prompted a protest from 12 tenured
professors, who felt the
president should simply have defended
the course against people
offended by the content and assignments.
They felt it was a case
of academic freedom being threatened.