C’mon, believe the professors; they care, after all.
One of the lessons I picked up early in my teaching job was to be reflective: Not dig in or get bogged down, regret when you do something wrong, and pay attention to what others say.
However, I also discovered that some liberal instructors have a propensity for self-righteousness.
For instance, a colleague after took the microphone and proceeded to lecture the audience about how she “gets up so early in the morning” and “goes to bed later” because she has so many papers to grade… and cares” but deeply” about her students at a community meeting regarding a referendum for further school/district funding.
The sobs were very visible.
Fortunately, a gentleman intervened and inquired about how she was so different from him. He had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to fill his delivery truck, and finally put in between 100 and 200 miles on the road, for less pay and a fraction of the rewards.
And so it was appropriate for me to see a pair of self-congratulatory doctor pieces this year. One comes from Princeton’s Jen Jennings, who teaches anthropology and examines “racial, economic, and gendered disparities in education and wellness outcomes.”
However, I’m zeroing in on Rice University English Professor Helena Michie because of a very important follow-up account. She modeled my old partner and wrote an op-ed defending her career from “powerful businessmen.”
Michie uses references to the specter of Democratic enemies in the past, like Richard Nixon, who once said” The academics are the enemy,” to connect in the president’s new higher education efforts.
The female and intellectual theory author’s argument is that the majority of professors aren’t “elite” because they “don’t generate nearly as much money as different people with advanced degrees,” don’t include tenure, and in states like California, where it’s known that people sleep in their cars due to lack of money (yes, that deep-blue state of California ).
However, the Right believes that universities are “ground zero for wokeness,” which Michie ( pictured ) claims is just “fearmongering.”
Given the disparate political bents of universities as a whole, the author of “five books in Victorian studies and the study of gender and sexuality” would really have your average Joe Six-Pack believe that instructors are somehow above it all and contain their biases, and they don’t “force a particular point of view ] on an unsuspecting class.
However, Michie admits she is “woke,” and the examples she gives of how everyone believes in a “gender ideology” ( such as a man who “believes in the” trad-wife” movement “likely believes men are superior to women ) don’t much to support her point.
MORE: Rice University announces plans to relocate the statue of the founder of the slave-holding institution
She ends by reiterating an old friend’s comment that she uses the tactic of DARE you question us because we care.
The world reaches out to us. Students tell us about parents who have lost their jobs and relatives who have been deported, especially in this recent wave of family cuts. Students have told me that due to a lack of health care, including hormone therapy for trans students and those who are pregnant and having abortions, they are having trouble finishing their work. Of course, we as faculty are by no means immune to financial and psychological loss, but what our students experience haunts us. We find it impossible to fall asleep at night in our beds and, for the most vulnerable of us, in our cars.
A few weeks later, the Rice University Office of Public Affairs celebrated the launch of a new “media studies” major, in case you were even slightly influenced by Michie’s piece.
The media studies major at Rice is a really exciting combination of the critical and creative, according to program director Michael Dango ( pictured ). On the subject of politics, we’re thinking about where media comes from, and what are the pressing issues of power and politics in media.”
Dango added that the program is organizing internships and” community placements” for students” who might be interested in social media campaigns for nonprofits or thinking about how media can serve various political and activist projects.”
Ah. ” Activist projects”
Dango is a “scholar of contemporary art and literature,” according to his faculty page, and his work has a connection to feminist political theory, particularly those that deal with racism, Marxist feminism, and racial capitalism.
His personal website highlights his book” Madonna’s Erotica,” which “examines the politics of sex in the wake of the AIDS crisis and the 1990s culture wars,” and how it ties into contemporary “hysteria” regarding “queer theory and critical race theory.”
I’m confident that this new major will be ideologically balanced and/or politically neutral and won’t “force a particular point of view on an unsuspecting class.”
Sike.
MORE: Rice University students give a massive group hug, literally and metaphorically, as they process Trump’s victory.
Kurt Russell says” Trust Me,”” Used Cars,” and” Used Cars” on YouTube. IMAGES IN THE INTERIOR Rice University
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