by Scott JaschikPatricia Adler stunned her students in a popular course on deviance Thursday by announcing that she would be leaving her tenured position teaching sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Adler said that officials told her that one of the highlights of the course -- popular year after year -- had to go. That is an annual lecture on prostitution (a topic covered in deviance courses nationwide). Her news stunned students, who are mobilizing on social media to make sure she can stay on. And because the course typically enrolls 500 students, many students and alumni are expressing outrage.
"Patti Adler's deviance class was the best class I have ever taken. In particular, the interactive prostitution lecture was the most memorable and informative lecture I have ever experienced. It was in no way offensive.... It was real," wrote one student on an online petition demanding that Boulder keep her, without barring her from teaching the deviance course.
The rest of the misery.
This abuse of power by administration, while it doesn't surprise me, sickens me. One cannot safely teach in an environment where the rules change in Calvinballesque fashion.
ReplyDeleteWait, an interactive lecture on prostitution?
ReplyDeleteHow interactive are we talking about?
After reading the article, it appears that Prof. Adler had her graduate students dress-up as prostitutes and role-play with the class.
ReplyDeleteI don't say this often, but I see where the administration is coming from on this one. Grad students have it hard enough without having to dress up as prostitutes for my lectures...
Bison, you mis-read. They were undergraduate assistants not grad students.
ReplyDeleteWhat Bison said, even more so if they were undergrads. Role-playing in a social science class is not uncommon, but dressing up as prostitutes?
DeleteAs for the squirm factor (to administrators) of a class about deviance, usually I would say let 'em squirm. My CC's human sexuality classes show explicit films and invite guest speakers from various "lifestyles." Students sign detailed waivers the first day of class so they know what they're getting into. Of course, that makes them more determined to stick around. But the college has the protection of these adult students' signatures in case parents protest in mid semester.
Undergrad TAs! I did miss that part.
DeleteI'm sorry, academic freedom ends where student dignity begins. Why doesn't Prof. Adler dress up as a prostitute instead of the students? Let the class ask her questions. She can even do different days as different types.
There, I've solved your problem for you, Boulder. My consulting fee is 5K, but you can just send it to the CM bunker. You're all welcome.
I wonder whether this was always done with undergrad TAs, or whether that's a subtle but important shift that occurred sometime over the 20 years. I'm surprised (but not really) at how common undergrad TAs are becoming. Maybe it's just because I attended R1s, but it seems like something new, or at least growing, to me. And, while I'm all for not overproducing Ph.D.s (and even M.A.s), it seems like a worrisome trend.
DeleteThe role-playing was voluntary and had nothing to do with grades. It sounded like an engaging and effective way to make an important point. We are so pointlessly squeamish about discussing sex work that we mostly ignore the plight of those who are engaged in it, either by choice or by force. As a result, we allow sex workers to suffer at the violent and oppressive hands of pimps, ignore the needless spread of disease, and turn a blind eye to victims of sex trafficking. Professor Adler is doing important work, and the UC-Boulder administrators look like pointless martinets.
DeleteMy only question is why prostitution falls under the category of "deviance."
No one filed a complaint or even expressed that they were coerced or forced into participating, and yet she is forced to stop and could lose her retirement benefits?
ReplyDeleteNo one filed a complaint of any kind or expressed any kind of discomfort. This is a class she has taught for 20 years and she has given this lecture as part of the class every time. The university complained that she hadn't run it past the "IRB" but that is only used for research, not teaching; and they threatened to fire her and take away her retirement benefits "if anyone ever complained about her teaching in future" if she didn't give in. And the university didn't get her to run it past the IRB before they made their threats. They started with threats.
DeleteSo much for the protection of tenure. I mean, sure, she could stay and fight it out. But the university had already decided to destroy her. I don't blame her for saying, the hell with this, I will take the buyout, thank you, because this has become a toxic and hostile work environment.
The threat of being fired for cause (presumably on the basis of supposedly violating the anti-harassment policy) is definitely the really scary part, and, yes, the part to which I might cave, too, if I were that close to retirement (I wonder whether one can really refuse to disburse someone's vested retirement benefits? That seems unlikely. But even losing emerita status, and access to resources such as the library and email, could be a real blow for a still-active scholar.*). I can easily see taking the buyout -- and perhaps then raising enough of a public stink to bring in an offer or two of a senior-level visiting position elsewhere (yes, that would be a bit Machiavellian, but I could see it feeling like a win-win: publicize a violation of academic freedom, and find a way to stay active professionally for a few more years).
Delete*At least in the case of a professor in my grad department who raped a grad student, the penalty was involuntary retirement (with, I assume, full benefits, but we're talking a private university that uses TIAA, which may be different from a state school) and being banned from campus (including the library and the hideaway offices that emeritus faculty generally received). I certainly want to see Prof. Adler come out of this better off than that bastard.
This just seems like a political move--someone wanted to get rid of her and this is what they chose to turn into a platform.
DeleteWhat does the IRB have to do with what happens in class?
@Cynic: I'm not in a field that deals with the IRB much, but, given the extended reach of such bodies, I've had to learn a little (enough to keep me out of trouble while teaching a writing-in-the-disciplines course), and the bottom line is: it doesn't. This isn't an experiment (not even the sort of demonstration experiment, like staging a fake robbery to demonstrate the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, that is sometimes done in classes, though I think one would have to be careful about that sort of thing as well these days, lest the presence of a fake gun cause various sorts of trouble, up to and including someone drawing a real one). It's a method of presenting information. It *might* come under the jurisdiction of various other bodies, but not the IRB.
DeleteMildred said "they threatened to fire her and take away her retirement benefits 'if anyone ever complained about her teaching in future.' "
DeleteWTF? I'm glad Adler is publicizing this. Where's the faculty union?
For my dissertation, I had to get IRB approval to interview colleagues, but this isn't even research...
DeleteI think something else is up and this was their excuse to get rid of her.
I sympathize with professor Alder but thiss strikes me as a bed that academia has made and must lay in. Many previous complaints about inappropriate courses have been based on the issue of making students "uncomfortable" when in fact the subject matter has been racist, homophobic or otherwise inappropriate. The students who sincerely complained in those instances are not to blame. Those complaints, at least publically, have been presented presented as a violation of the students' right to maintain their "comfort." Of course inappropriate rantings by faculty should cease but when the tool used to do that is in defense of the a student's "comfort," then that tool gets used in all sorts of unanticipated ways. As higher education comes under greater scrutiny, expect more of these complaints.
ReplyDeleteYou've got a point there, Ben. I'm not sure it's even easy to say what, exactly, is racist or homophobic: a theory that suggests that heredity or culture has something to do with the persistence of an African-American underclass? Someone suggesting that homosexuality is even partly a choice? I'd be instinctively suspicious of all of the above (with perhaps just a little bit more willingness to hear the culture-based argument out, especially if it tied back to origins in historic legal discrimination), but I'm not sure that not discussing such arguments at all is really a good solution. Similarly, while I think that Larry Summers was impolitic in his statements about women and science given his position at the time as President of Harvard, I don't think the possibilities he raised were inappropriate as academic arguments, and I would have seen nothing wrong with them being raised by another professor (or Summers at another time), even if doing so made some female students uncomfortable (the ideal, of course, would be for them to be raised in a setting where others with equal authority could offer alternative perspectives/explanations).
DeleteI'm of two minds here:
ReplyDelete(1) This does strike me as a violation of Prof. Adler's academic freedom. At the very least, after 20 years of teaching this course this way, she deserved a much more thorough hearing than she apparently got (it's also possible that she did not respond in the most cooperative or diplomatic way, and/or let a process that I suspect would have vindicated her run its course, but I can certainly understand her reacting strongly to must have come as a shock). At the very least, she should have been in on a series of conversations that included all interested parties, and her colleagues, who would be the most reliable authorities on what techniques are usual and appropriate for teaching their field, should have had a strong say in the matter. It doesn't sound like that happened.
(2) I wonder whether this really was the best way to approach the subject. As Proffie G points out, there are options such as showing a well-made film of well-conducted interviews with one or more sex workers, or even inviting sex workers themselves (current and/or former) to class. The role-playing strikes me as the worst of both worlds: some potential discomfort for the TAs (though as long as they genuinely had a choice, I don't see a real problem), and nobody with real experience present to answer questions (which would also be a problem with a film, but at least you wouldn't have the discomfort/perceived possible harassment factor).
In short, there might be some questions worth discussing here, but the situation appears to have been handled very badly, at least on the administrative side, with little to no regard to the role of the faculty in determining how their field should be taught.
"as long as they genuinely had a choice..."
DeleteHave to second Beaker Ben on this. Power imbalance, academics would say in any other situation, means that to some degree they did not genuinely have a choice. Not the students who actively participated, and not the students who attended.
Not defending the administration. It's just that when these policies were put into place we were thinking of them being used by the right people for the right reasons, and we dismissed those who argued that they would be used by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Sometimes we did not stop at attacking them, either, but accused them of complicity in the ills we were trying to address.
What bothers me is this: a) no one complained in the first place b) her academic and financial future would be in the hands of some unspecified level of "student discomfort" God help us all when the particular emotional whims of 18-22 year old students (mostly) dictate whether we get to pay our mortgage (and probably student loan) payments.
ReplyDeleteI feel like there must be a compromise here where undergraduate RAs aren't pressured to dress up like prostitutes. I know it's not my decision, but blowing tenure and a 20 year career on one lecture of one course seems like a misuse of the nuclear option.
DeletePlus, 20 years of the same thing! Shit, why not change it up? Have the whole class dress as prostitutes! Just think of the role-playing opportunities!
It's not the hill I would choose to die (or even risk the mortgage/pension) on, either.
DeleteBut being forced in this way to change a method of instruction I'd been using for 20 years would certainly affect my feelings about the place I worked, and not for the better.
There's a ton of pearl-clutching going on here. I'm guessing that no one would care if the roleplaying exercise was about, say, drug dealing or white collar crime.
ReplyDeleteAnother Damned Medievalist has a thoughtful post up about the power dynamics of the situation.
ReplyDelete"What bothers me is this: a) no one complained in the first place b) her academic and financial future would be in the hands of some unspecified level of "student discomfort" (@Dr.Python)
ReplyDeleteThat's how I feel about this, too. The undergraduate assistants were volunteers, with no grade at stake. Also, if you can't present "controversial" topics in "controversial" ways for fear of offending somebody' sensibilities, then (as she says in the IHE piece) things have become hopelessly bureaucratic. Taking this kind of risk is part of what academic freedom is meant to protect; so CU is deliberately whittling it down further.
But the first thought that occurred to me was: prostitution as "deviance"? What's deviant about it? And what else is on the syllabus? Any other skits we haven't heard about?
"What's deviant about [prostitution]?"
DeleteNot being a sociologist, but having read some, I think it goes like this: Prostitution is deviant from the norm because it involves overt economic exchange. If it were not viewed as deviant, there would not be laws against it or "shaming" penalties such as publishing the names of johns.
(We could also get into the decades-old discussion about the tacit economic exchange involved in marriage, if marriage is defined as exclusive sexual access to a woman. But let's not go there.)
Am I missing something? My understanding is that the TA's acted the role of sex workers talking about their experiences. Much of the response to this case seems to assume they were acting the role sex workers actively engaged in their work.
ReplyDeleteWhich is not to say the distinction makes everything OK, but one warrants a much different response from the admins than the other.
I also suspect that many will willfully miss the distinction to score points about all those deviant academics (Margaret Wente chimes in in 3... 2... 1...).
Heh heh heh. Yes, I always wait for Margaret Wente's next column on academia, education, learning...
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think CU’s administration is being heavy-handed, especially since no one complained.
ReplyDeleteBut I have some deeper questions/thoughts about this.
Isn’t there a better way to teach the material instead of asking 20 year-old undergrads to act like prostitutes in front of a class of 500 students?
If an ATA declines to participate, is there a hidden penalty? For example, could that student receive a less enthusiastic recommendation for grad school, since the ones who participated are more willing to volunteer?
If a male professor gave the same class in this manner, what would likely happen to him?
I don't understand at all how the administration could reasonably compare this to the Sandusky scandal.
Gee, let's hope the drama department avoids any performances wherein the actors must play prostitutes....
ReplyDeleteMaybe having students in the drama department portraying the sex workers makes sense. It avoids any perception of power relationships between the Professor Adler and the ATAs, and the drama folks benefit because it adds something to their resume.
Delete