110 Comments

1. Porgie:

I feel her pain. My toilet backed up the other day so I sued the City Works Department for racism, or sexism, or whatever my lawyer said I should do (I think he just wants a fat payoff but I could be wrong).

Seriously though, Priya is simply another link in the long tread of sorry losers whom the left has convinced are victims of one sort or another.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:10 pm 2. JFP:

“In many ways, social constructivism has been reframed as postmodernism, since both movements question the scientific realm’s theory of truth — that is, that scientific facts mirror an external reality which does indeed exist.”

So, does this mean she is a skeptic on global warming?

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:14 pm 3. Cardinals Nation:

There were times when I felt I was missing out on the “college experience” by taking distance learning courses to complete my B.A.

Now I know I wasn’t.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:16 pm 4. Dan Collins:

Roger, I read of this nitwit; I believe it was at Malchow’s Dartblog. At any rate, I don’t think the courts are the way to go for redress. What we need is more effective Right to Suck legislation.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:17 pm 5. Ardsgaine:

“So, does this mean she is a skeptic on global warming?”

No, it means she’s a born again Christian, and an advocate of ID.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:24 pm 6. Brickle:

Don’t care. Made the decision to not send the kids to Dartmouth (or Duke) last year.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:31 pm 7. ic:

Title VII of anti-federal [SIC] discrimination laws, aka anti-idiotarian-discrimination laws

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:31 pm 8. The Den Mother:

“I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal [SIC] discrimination laws.”

WHOM shall go unmentioned? Where did this person get her PhD, at Bob’s Correspondence College?

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:32 pm 9. Patrick:

“In many ways, social constructivism has been reframed as postmodernism, since both movements question the scientific realm’s theory of truth — that is, that scientific facts mirror an external reality which does indeed exist.”

Actually JFP, she sounds like Alan Sokal writing in the pages of Social Text. Of course, Venkatesan actually means it.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:37 pm 10. David:

Yikes!

Did you read her email? Trite. Uninformed. Grammar errors. Stilted. Even boring.

How in the world does Dartmouth hire someone like this?

“Right to Suck” indeed. It’s her only hope.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:38 pm 11. M. Simon:

I hope her suit succeeds.

It is blatantly unfair to discriminate against stupids with PhDs. It makes life so much harder for ordinary stupids.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:40 pm 12. Tim:

I understand that to dwell on the legal underpinnings of her lawsuit gives undue credence to this whackjob, but what exactly is “discriminatory” in saying a specific professor sucks? Apparently, that is a widely-held view in her case.

And I wonder what sort of market is out there for her book - outside of the humanities departments of the Ivies, of course. Publishers will be lining up around the block for the chance to publish that paranoid drivel.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:48 pm 13. Garrett Bowling:

“In many ways, social constructivism has been reframed as postmodernism, since both movements question the scientific realm’s theory of truth — that is, that scientific facts mirror an external reality which does indeed exist.”

So, does this mean she is a skeptic on global warming?

No, JFP, she’s a creationist.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:48 pm 14. gmsc:

It is not clear exactly what sort of “harassment” poor Priya Venkatesan Ph.D. (as she generally signed herself) was subject to.

Maybe she suffered from “postmodernist” harassment.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:49 pm 15. Jeff:

Should we even give PhDs in the humanities anymore? Jeeesh.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:53 pm 16. Criticize the prof, get sued! « Muse Free:

[...] former students under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for criticizing her in course evaluations. This report has the details along with snippets of Ms Venkatesan’s own writing, which should leave no [...]

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:53 pm 17. Dave Hardy:

I’m not entirely sure that Title VII covers discrmination against moronic blowhards.

Add narcissistic moronic blowhards. Her students gave her bad evaluations, and she’s going to write a book on it? That’s going to make the NY Times bestseller list, for sure!

Not to worry about the problem that the students have hold the copyright on their evaluations…

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:56 pm 18. Light:

I can’t wait until the Judge reads the reviews and tells her what a terrible prof she is, the *rack of the gavel* case dismissed with prejudice. Uh oh, I hope she won’t sue the judge for “prejudice”, that’s sounds la lot like “Discrimination”!

For a PhD, this woman is a blinding idiot who has yet to look up the definition of “discrimination”. My guess is that she’s a Democrat who agrees with the “fairness” doctrine.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:04 pm 19. tim maguire:

“insecurity, ego, and more”

What more can be said? What more need be said?

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:05 pm 20. joe:

How does someone like this even get hired?

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:07 pm 21. PersonFromPorlock:

The sample cited of her ’scholarly’ prose isn’t all that bad; it seems to have been written to inform rather than impress, which is always a welcome departure in academic prose. That doesn’t mean it’s not nonsense, of course (there’s not enough of it to tell) but if it is, it’s articulate nonsense.

I will admit that suing her former students seems a little, um, quixotic….

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:19 pm 22. Chaim Witz:

I agree, Person. She’s a Keats by the standards of today’s academic writing. Too bad she seems to be certifiable.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:33 pm 23. Jane:

What recourse do students have when they suspect their professor is (ahem) reality challenged? The good professor’s circular reasoning is startling in its similarity to many expository essays I have seen left behind by library patrons - after they had picked up their belongings in a big trash bag and left for the night.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:34 pm 24. Grimmy:

“scientific facts mirror an external reality which does indeed exist.”

No, this means she believes global warming is man-made. Even though temps dropped 0.7 degrees last year - enough to wipe all all the warming “progress” of the last decade.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:34 pm 25. MaggieW:

Oh. Another papered donkey?
She needs to return to school, the first
grade.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:38 pm 26. Ellen K:

My daughter had a terrible economics teacher. He was hard to understand due to a thick accent, but the problem was really that he never addressed the material. Instead he ranted about his daily life, problems with his girlfriend and his student visa. He was a graduate student who had to teach to keep his scholarship. The members of the class went to the Dean to try to get help and were turned away. They totally bombed him in a similar fashion to the professor cited in the article above, but three years later HE STILL IS TEACHING. It is an absolute travesty that he keeps this job,destroying undergrads GPA’s through inane lectures that have nothing to do with the material over which he tests. When my daughter asked for help from a friend who was getting his Masters in economics at a nearby university, he looked at the material and said that it wasn’t even sophomore level, it was simply the grad level work reworded from an existing text. So he didn’t even address the needs of his students. And this is why people are so bitter at the way universities treat our kids.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:46 pm 27. -=DrNikFromNYC=-:

Laughing stock bitch: SHUT UP.

STOP ABUSING YOUR POWER TO INTIMIDATE STUDENTS.

Critique science all you want. Just don’t bully students or PUBLIC OPINION will stomp you AND YOUR KIND OF PARASITIC “CRITICAL STUDIES” TYPES OUT, PERIOD.

Tell me that power alone says that a benzene molecule is a vibrating perfect hexagon.

This e-mail is a reproduction of my public one, here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/04/29/from-the-annals-of-the-academy-prof-sues-students-for-criticizing-her/

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:51 pm 28. Dr. Weevil » Just Whom Does She Think She Is?:

[...] Pajamasmedia, Roger Kimball quotes a letter from a professor to her (former) students, threatening to sue them for poor course [...]

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:03 pm 29. bob:

Countersuit! Why not? If Ms. V, Ph.D is going to force N of her students to go hire lawyers, they ought to get full use of that legal assistance, no? The cool thing is, each student has to pay billable hours to defend against one suit, and prosecute another — but Ms. V, Ph.D has to pay billable hours to defend against all N of them!

I wonder if she’ll get a volume discount?

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:03 pm 30. T Wendell:

What did she say? And who gives a rat’s behind?

The excerpted paragraph is pile of egomaniacal claptrap that is intended to impress and not to inform.

Since when does a business sue their customer for being unhappy with their service?

Here’s an idea. The students at Dartmouth should sue the college for breach of contract. This “professor” is a joke, and her students paid thousands of dollars for this junk.

I have never seen or heard of anything more ridiculous if my life.

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:03 pm 31. oman:

I can see this working out really well. “Dear President: It has cost me an arm and a leg to send my kid to your school. Now I find that our life savings have been squandered on intellectual nightsoil of the kind proffered by ‘Professor’ Venkatesan and that, as a bonus, my kid’s candid appraisal has dragged us into a baseless lawsuit seeking to appease the pride of a sorehead without the emotional maturity of a pre-K. My lawyer says this case is a joke but he’s the only one laughing, because it will take us at least five figures to get it dismissed. We didn’t sign up for a liberal arts experience in Thoughtcrime, abetted by an administration too clueless or spineless to prevent its employees from abusing the students entrusted to their care. Please forward my kid’s transcript to Podunk U, we’re done.”

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:05 pm 32. XStudent:

Suing her students for their bad evaluations of her teaching: that’s like shooting the messenger(s).

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:17 pm 33. indga:

When I think how I can’t get a job teaching college English, at a university to be unnamed, just cuz I don’t have a PhD or I went to the wrong undergrad institutions or something dumb like that, and morons like Priya are prancing around at Dartmouth totally without a clue!

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:23 pm 34. Seven Machos:

PersonFromPorlock: Why do so many academics write like they are trying to sound smug?

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:28 pm 35. Professor Sues Students… « The View from Alexandria:

[...] 29, 2008 by philo when it sounds as if it should be the other way around.  “Worst professor ever”—well confirmed.  What on earth is going on at Dartmouth?  Consider her qualifications for a [...]

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:40 pm 36. The Medicine Man:

Woe to the hapless reviewer who injudiciously pans her hotly anticipated magnum opus!

John

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:06 pm 37. Nancy Gee:

Is she an example of affirmative action, or multiculturalism? Another non-native American misunderstanding and trying to use our court system against us … in this case, against students who didn’t hire her and don’t pay her, so how can they be discriminating against the silly cow?

Note to furriners: it is NOT a Constitutional right that everyone must like everyone else and that no one is allowed to criticize anyone or anything, despite what you may have learned in your women’s studies classes.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:09 pm 38. Sam:

Ah, yes. An affirmative action hire disseminating expertise in complete drivel who has the audacity to sue the students who suffered through the class and generously warned others. Since this is an ivy league school, I assume “lesser” schools have similar teachers who are only less skilled in twisting words into scholarly sounding gobbledygook.

Costs are on a ride up with no end in sight and the value of the education you buy is correspondingly going down. Universities are becoming little more than fancy babysitting agencies for young adults.

The cultural Marxists are in complete control now.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:19 pm 39. Hoystory:

I’m not sure about this, but you might be opening yourself up to a lawsuit — probably copyright infringement for publishing material that she’s hoping to use in her book. She’s the litigious type, so I hope you’ve got some good lawyers.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:29 pm 40. Daily Pundit » A PhD:

[...] Roger’s Rules » From the annals of the academy: Prof sues students for criticizing her [...]

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:30 pm 41. Pink Pig:

One wacko professor is not the issue. Dartmouth is entitled to make the occasional mistake, but it should have a mechanism in place to correct its mistakes. Of course, if Dartmouth were to correct its mistakes, there would be nobody left to do the teaching. Maybe this would be a good thing. The world doesn’t need Dartmouth — it will handle life perfectly well without it.

It’s probably important to understand that Dartmouth has a big-time inferiority complex. Dartmouth (and to a slightly lesser extent Cornell and Brown) has always been considered second-rate by the Ivy elite. So if they have professors who claim god-like authority, from Dartmouth’s perspective this is probably a good thing.

In my dream world, the number of kids going to college would be only a tiny fraction of the current number, and high school education would train everybody else to become useful members of society. College students would not automatically be inducted into the society of the rich. College graduates would not be assumed to be smarter than everybody else. Society needs some scientists and medical doctors, rather more than we have today, and a few lawyers and intellectuals, rather fewer than we have today. College should provide those. Most people in our society do not need prolonged training, and are better suited to learning on the job.

I have a few contrarian opinions, one of which is that one of the greatest disasters to befall this country was the G.I. Bill of the Truman administration. It was the first of the “feel-good” bills that have come to symbolize our political process, and its unintended consequences include destroying high school education in America. It used to be that you could get a decent, well-rounded education in high school — lamentably, that is no longer the case. Good teachers no longer aspire to teach high-school students — they want to teach college students instead. What’s left is a void that has been filled by hacks for the most part.

I could go on about this, but I’ll take a break instead.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:37 pm 42. Not a Yank:

A famous philosopher put it succinctly — What a Maroon!

Bugs Bunny.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:44 pm 43. Mark W:

“whom shall go unmentioned” from an Ivy League writing professor! I guess that’s why they have proofreaders.
Anyway, doesn’t Title VII deal with employment? Are students at a private college now legally considered their professors’ employers or co-workers? With her apparent reading comprehension skills, how did Dr. Venkatesan ever get a Ph.D. in Literature from UCSD? By using fancy words and being a minority, I suppose.

Apr 29, 2008 - 11:13 pm 44. Pete:

Sad to say, episodes such as this one are anything but rare in today’s academy. I am an adult graduate student of history, enrolled after many years of self-study in the field, and I was stunned by the generally low level of scholarship, and the thinly-veiled hatred of western values and culture. There are exceptions of course, but in general I’d have to say I have never been around so many feminists, marxists, and post-modern nihilists as in graduate school. Apart from the sciences, healthcare fields, business majors and engineering, college is increasingly a waste of time and money. Anything in the humanities, and the soft sciences (sociology, anthropology)is suspect as politicized, not to mention the ‘victim studies’ departments - i.e., women’s studies or black studies, which are nothing more than platforms for radicals posing as scholars.

Im changing majors to engineering…

Apr 30, 2008 - 12:02 am 45. Dr. Terrier:

Does anyone else find it interesting that the evaluations had names on them. I know at my school, our evaluations are supposed to be anonymous so that we can speak candidly about the professor. If she somehow “discovered” the names of the students, what does that say about their review process?

Apr 30, 2008 - 3:22 am 46. Dan Collins:

It’s probably important to understand that Dartmouth has a big-time inferiority complex. Dartmouth (and to a slightly lesser extent Cornell and Brown) has always been considered second-rate by the Ivy elite. So if they have professors who claim god-like authority, from Dartmouth’s perspective this is probably a good thing.

What makes you say that, Pink Pig? I haven’t noticed this presumed inferiority complex. Dartmouth has decided to remain a college, and to focus its mission on undergraduates. That’s what makes this particularly disgusting.

Why would anyone want to be considered first-rate by the “Ivy elite”? Does this reflect as much on the institution as, say, what happened to Larry Summers at Harvard, or what’s gone on with Madonna “Noose” Constantine at Columbia? One goes to Dartmouth to say “fuck you” to Ivy elitism in the first place (at least in my case: dining halls? WTF?).

Apr 30, 2008 - 3:49 am 47. Burdette Lamar:

“… in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) ….”

Whom? This person teaches writing? She should instead be studying grammar.

Apr 30, 2008 - 3:50 am 48. Don Surber » Blog Archive » Just ask me:

[...] A professor is suing her students, citing discrimination. Maybe my wife can sue our kids for her C-section scars. Hat tip: Law [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 4:00 am 49. TJIC:

I was a double major at Cornell (History and Computer Science) and ended up taking a few STS (Science, Technology and Society) classes. One of these classes was really great - a graduate level seminar co-taught by two up-and-coming young turks (one from the history department, one from - I recall - a molecular biology background).

Another course, though, was much as described above: a professor who didn’t understand the first thing about technology who used left-wing social “science” concepts as a replacement for real scholarship …and who brooked no disagreement from her left wing party line (any doubt about her view of the world was cast as “buying in to right wing propaganda”).

Alan Sokal’s “Social Text” affair demonstrated (a) the fundamental meaningless of postmodern culture studies; (b) the obsessive desire for respect from their “peers” in the real sciences that these cultural studies folks have.

These two trends smash into each other head on in the STS world - insecure know-nothings who respect science (or, at least, respect the respect that science garners) who none the less crave attention and deference often run the show.

It’s funny (sad funny, no ha-ha funny) that these mini scandals always break out in the “fake” departments.

Apr 30, 2008 - 4:20 am 50. e-Learning Pundit | About those end-of-course evaluations for your prof…:

[...] College, a professor threatens to sue various former  students.  Roger Kimball  provides  additional coverage that  includes student comments about the course and [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 4:42 am 51. sfcmac:

Let’s see….an incompetent, narcissistic, belligerent ‘professor’ suing students for criticism.

I don’t think she has a legal leg to stand on.

Apr 30, 2008 - 4:45 am 52. Alex Bensky:

I woke up this morning to find out that overnight my cat had coughed up a hairball right on my bed. She’ll be getting the lawsuit papers any day.

If Dartmouth had a more rational academic culture she wouldn’t have dreamed of doing this as she would have expected to be laughed out of the faculty lounge. The sigificant and chilling thing is that she has initiated this.

Apr 30, 2008 - 4:48 am 53. James:

From her Dartmouth bio;

“After obtaining a BA from Dartmouth College, I have an MS in Genetics from UC Davis and a PhD in Literature from UC San Diego. My first book, Molecular Biology in Narrative Form, was just released. My current position is as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, which will form the basis of my latest manuscript, A Postmodernist in the Laboratory.”

I take it English is not her native language. Still, how is it possible to get a PhD in America and not master the fundamentals? Oh well, she’s a “woman of color”, which is all that matters these days.

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:36 am 54. James:

I encountered a good number of professors in college who were border-line illiterate in the English language. I’m not sure why that is allowed. But at least none of them were teaching writing.

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:40 am 55. Bill:

But she did add to the diversity of the faculty by being Asian.

I am an attorney and have now defended three discrimination lawsuits brought by Indians … er … east Indians … er … south asians … I am developing a theory. By virtue of higher education, Indian immigrants to this country are likely to come from upper castes. Many perceive themselvs to now be in a position similar to the lower castes and they assume by virtue of that experience the majority here will treat them as they treated lower castes back home. This makes them hypersensitive bordering on paranoid. This, the anti-discrimination laws and an unfamiliarity with American lexicon makes them a litigator’s delight. I had one Indian plaintiff who claimed that he was racailly harassed when a colleague referred to him as a “brown noser”. This, the plaintiff explained in his deposition, could only be a reference to his brown skin. Even his own lawyer burst out laughing at that.

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:44 am 56. Maureen:

The chilling thing is “Have a nice day.” Probably the best piece of writing in her letter — nicely timed, too.

Re: “College students would not automatically be inducted into the society of the rich.”

Wha? How did I miss that? When did I get rich?

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:49 am 57. Bill:

One more thing. The good professor appears to know the law no better than she knows grammar. The professor’s threat to “name names” of students and disclose their class work in her upcoming tell-all book will likely be a violation of federal law (Family Education Rights Privacy Act, FERPA).

Maybe someone should sic the Feds on her.

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:58 am 58. Professor sues over bad course evaluations « Internet Scofflaw:

[...] Roger’s Rules, via [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:06 am 59. A.W.:

Okay, before i laugh this off, were any of the comments even remotely racist, sexist, etc?

I could imagine a scenario where bigoted kids create a hostile environment from a sexual/racial harrassment angle.

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:34 am 60. JFP:

By the way, who was it who wanted course evaluations by students in the first place? Wasn’t it the left? Why is a leftist now whining about this? Isn’t she aware of the history behind this practice?

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:38 am 61. daveinboca:

Hilarious. This moronic victim of academicide thinks her PhD gives her the right to sue students who criticize what appears to be her suffering from another neologism, ACADEMENTIA!

I hope this goes to the SCOTUS as a prime example of how awful American teachers are. She sucks, her course sucks, her teaching methods suck. But don’t put that down on the student evaluations, or the bi-yotch will sue you!

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:47 am 62. Morton:

You dumbasses! Read ALL the student evaluations. Do your own thinking!! Don’t jump to conclusions! That’s what Mom and Dad taught me 60 years ago.

Most of you are as dumb as the post-modernists!

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:54 am 63. Mikee:

What will Dartmouth do when zero students sign up for her course in future? Force some to take her course?

There is an obvious outcome to this whole thing - she will soon be suing Dartmouth for her firing….

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:22 am 64. Newbury:

Her attitude towards her students reveals her narcissism and her (self-perceived) ‘right’ to demand respect. I ran across a post a year or two ago, regarding the differences in attitude between Indian and North American views of status and caste. I do not have a full url, but I think it was at http://unremittingverse.blogspot.com/
.
The poem is exactly on point (and exactly points to the problem with the “social sciences” and victimology departments). Thank you Will Warren.

******************
This, it seems to me, is
part of a wider absence of caste or class distinctions.
Indian intellectuals have tended to downplay these
American achievements: the respect for the individual, the remarkable social mobility, the searching scrutiny to which public officials and state agencies are subjected. They see only the imperial power, the exploiter and the bully, the invader of faraway lands and the manipulator of international organizations to serve the interests of the American economy. The Gulf War, as one friend of mine put it, was undertaken in defence of the American way of driving.
Ramachandra Guha, What We Think of America, Granta 77, 3/28/02

Will Warren: The UnremittingVerse

The Dean’s Box

A dean totes his box up the stairs,
Confounding an onlooker’s code:
In what land does an eminent chair
Serve as coolie, disgraced by his load?

A people who seek subjugation
Inveterate bullies, the lot
Who plunder to fatten their nation
And would rather be cruel than not,

With a lust for power demonic
And a fondness for robbing the poor,
Hellbent on a world hegemonic,
Just itching to start up a war?

Or a country concerned with essentials,
Tired of customs with no useful part,
Where hard work is perceived quintessential
And the practical raised to an art,

Where careers are thrown open to talents,
Where caste has been left behind,
Where mobility generates balance
And competence stands enshrined?

Is it bullies in search of new servants
Or a people too busy for airs?
Let seekers of truth be observant
Of that dean with his box on the stairs.

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:29 am 65. PJ:

Her essay on…whatever it was is the key. She broke the last barrier against postmodernism, science!

This quasi-philosophy exists because it provides jobs for Ph.Ds.; there’s only so much you can say about Dickens or Matisse–critical theory opens up new vistas of employment possibilities for people who otherwise would be nearly unemployable.

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:44 am 66. Bob Kran:

She’s Indian…… ’nuff said. Terrible as professors, even worse as doctors.

(That should help her lawsuit.)

Apr 30, 2008 - 8:12 am 67. BooBoo:

This PhD has PTSD.

Postmodern Twit Suffering Dementia

Apr 30, 2008 - 8:19 am 68. Andrew E:

Has a defense fund been established for the students, and, if so, where do I go to contribute to it?

Apr 30, 2008 - 8:29 am 69. PersonFromPorlock:

“Seven Machos: PersonFromPorlock: Why do so many academics write like they are trying to sound smug?”

Oh, I doubt it’s a matter of sounding smug.

I offer once again my all-purpose plan for academic reform: put a ‘$1000 per year per degree’ tax on the employer of anyone with a college degree. Within a decade colleges will be both far cheaper and filled - thinly - with those who can actually profit from a college education.

Apr 30, 2008 - 8:47 am 70. Steynianism 126 « Free Mark Steyn!:

[...] ROGER KIMBALL: “From the annals of the academy: Prof sues students for criticizing her” …. [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 9:39 am 71. M.C.:

This professor does sound like an intellectual that needs to get some reality brought into the classroom and her manner of responding to students is so contrary to what should be done. However, this is one incident with one professor. I’ve had a few really outstanding ones in my college career and some of you probably have as well. Just goes to show that academia isn’t made up of all nutty professors.

Apr 30, 2008 - 11:28 am 72. Steve:

As I understand it, discrimination means being singled out or treated differently from everyone else. But I daresay that the students would undoubtedly give similar evaluations to any teacher who acted as she did. So they’d all be treated equally, which means no discrimination. I’m not a lawyer, but on the surface it sounds like this case totally lacks merit.

Apr 30, 2008 - 11:35 am 73. Job Requirement: Thick Skin « Expat Texan:

[...] would, however, suggest that this is not the way to address your concerns regarding statements on student evaluations.  More importantly, since student [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 12:11 pm 74. Giving faculty a good name. At DARTMOUTH. « The Bear Diaries:

[...] The rest is here. [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 12:57 pm 75. Dyna Chrome:

She’ll be teaching for many years. Libtards like her are a protected species in academia.

Apr 30, 2008 - 2:29 pm 76. Tablo:

Although I don’t know all the facts here, it certainly sounds like this prof is a little nuzzo…

But you guys shouldn’t be so quick to equate her antics with the entire diverse body of intellectual and not so intellectual patterns that goes under the name “postmodern.” Some of it, especially in relation to science studies, is actually making some well-thought-out and interesting points.

Apr 30, 2008 - 3:34 pm 77. Meh:

Come on, she’s not that much of a diversity bauble, unless you need more insane faculty members opening your institution up to lawsuits. After all, what sort of plaintiff communicates directly with defendants via e-mail and can’t even get the addresses right? Schools are far more terrified of litigious undergrads than unhinged and not particularly cunning adjuncts like Ms. Venkatesan. I’m sure she was very quickly taken to the woodshed by HR and/or Legal Affairs.

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:44 pm 78. Don Phillipson:

I was lucky enough to be innoculated early against taking student evaluations too seriously. In the first evaluations of my teaching, student A condemned me as biased against women because most of the course content (introductory course in the Science Studies program) was by and about men, and student B in the same course complimented me for the first anecdote (about the Nobel prize going to supervisor Martin Ryle instead of discoverer Jocelyn Bell) and later emphasizing the function of heterodox or female thought processes in science (cf. Barbara McClintock.) I have taken student evaluations cum granum salis ever since.

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:10 pm 79. Jim:

I don’t understand how the science and engineering faculty at Dartmouth ever approved this course syllabus and allowed the course to be offered.

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:57 pm 80. DC4me:

She totally has the right to sue these kids. They seriously were being disrespectful to her, that is discrimination.

And will you guys get off her case for grammer? Geez.

I feel for this woman, I hope she wins and those kids get kicked out of Dartmouth

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:12 pm 81. Dan Collins:

Is that good for your blood pressure, Don?

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:20 pm 82. Mpeterson:

Whew. Okay, speaking as a student of Hegel (arguably the one guy most responsible for the pomo mess now being perpetrated by English departments everywhere) and (although I don’t flash my gang signs very often) as a PhD from Deepest Darkest Philosophy, here’s the joke I’ve been using as an inoculation against this kind of nonsense for some years now:

Q: “What do you get when you cross a postmodernist with a mafia hit man?”

A: “You get an offer you can’t understand.”

Steve Fuller isn’t one of ours anymore either.

hiho

Apr 30, 2008 - 9:34 pm 83. Cosmo:

Doesn’t she realize that she’s already fleeced the system by being granted tenure? That’s your payday, “doctor” not a frivolous lawsuit that any sane judge would laugh at, throw out and laugh at some more. It’s imbeciles like this who hide behind their overuse of idiotic “-isms” that are wasting all the faculty seats that could be filled by actual human beings with something useful to say (like me!).

Apr 30, 2008 - 9:36 pm 84. BMoon:

My son was taking a Communications Major his first semester. His first two courses - World Religion and World Culture - cured him quick. What was intellible, he knew more than the professor. The rest was incoherent pretentious babble. Ever since, he has been a science major and will graduate the coming year.

Apr 30, 2008 - 9:39 pm 85. schnargley:

Dr. Venkatesan may actually have a case. In the sub-capitalist society, such as at Dartmouth, consciousness is expressed solely for the purpose of class divisions and impose a patriarchal paradigm of interpretation that includes a semioticist discourse. The students’ particular narrative of inconformity apparently has lead to a subdialectic desconstruction of discourse of the course subtexted in a materialist subcultural theory and sexist perceptions of society. But if the subject matter of this particular course is contextualised into a structuralist paradigm of reality that includes consciousness as a reality, as when Marx uses the term ’semioticist discourse’ to denote the role of the student as observer, the students’ subtext of consciousness becomes subconciousness, but only if sexuality is distinct from narrativity. This is clearly not the case of the student-teacher relationship in this particular case. hence, I support Dr. Venkatesan.

Have a nice day,
Dr. Schnargley PHD.

Apr 30, 2008 - 9:59 pm 86. Chris:

Normally, pity would be the humane reaction to learning that someone had wasted her life mastering something as useless and fraudulent as postmodernist theory. She’s so condescending and nasty about her imaginary superiority, however, that it’s hard not to enjoy her plight.

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:59 pm 87. stuart munro:

I guess the ultimate difference between the arts and sciences, is that a scientist largely speaking, doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks, they are self critical, and concerned with the truth value of their own material.

But then we get these fights about creationism and global warming. Confusing.

As for Pomo - courses containing it should have a large red label. Saussure would not have been impressed by the use to which his work was put. He too was a scientist.

May 1, 2008 - 12:37 am 88. raven:

This Prof. is hiding behind a wall of bullshit.

May 1, 2008 - 8:15 am 89. Upper:

“No, it means she’s a born again Christian, and an advocate of ID.”

Betcha she ain’t.

May 1, 2008 - 8:28 am 90. DartAnon:

“I guess the ultimate difference between the arts and sciences, is that a scientist largely speaking, doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks, they are self critical, and concerned with the truth value of their own material.

As for Pomo - courses containing it should have a large red label. Saussure would not have been impressed by the use to which his work was put. He too was a scientist.”

Not that I’m defending PV, because I think her claims are absurd; but this doesn’t have to turn into some anti-humanities vent-session. Just because someone obviously failed PV at some point in her education doesn’t mean that she represents humanities PhDs. One of the central concepts in pomo theory, for all of its downfalls, is ’self-criticism’ and rigorous examinations of truth-value itself. These aren’t patently ’science’ tools or traits. Also, Saussure is widely accepted as a pillar of structuralism, not post-structuralism. Though post-structuralism is not at all the same as postmodernism, it certainly occupies a more central role in postmodernist thought than structuralism. So your conclusion about the pomo use of Saussure is inappropriate.

May 1, 2008 - 10:56 am 91. Mario:

If this woman is looking for her 15 minutes of fame, she deserves a full blown exposé on 20/20, Nightline, Frontline, 60 Minutes, Today Show, Tonight Show, Tomorrow’s Show, Conan O’Brien, everywhere!!! What a crock… Unbelievable that as a student (and as a parent), and therefore, as a CUSTOMER, one has to take this kind of crap from a professor and from a school. My kids go to a private high school (very strict, very disciplinary-driven, very academically-challenging) and I always tend to believe that teachers will tell you the truth quicker than teenagers will (after all, teenagers will push the envelope, right?). I am not a blind parent that way - kids will be kids and pull wrong moves and make mistakes. However, when one teacher kept picking on my one child, accusing him of cheating because he saw him talking to a friend in the hallway in between tests without evidence or suspicion, or accusing him of gambling because he overheard him asking a friend for the $1.00 that his friend owed him, and issuing him detentions for stupid stuff, I set my foot down and demanded a face-to-face meeting. The teacher would not return any of my many phone calls and when I finally got a hold of the School Counselor, he called back saying “oh it is all a big misunderstanding, that’s not what has transpired blah blah blah”. I pushed for the meeting and when we had it, with a third party witness appointed by the school, all this jerk kept doing was back-pedaling and doing the “hameda hameda” dance. The idiot, his voice was shaking. I made sure that he and the school understood that if my kid is in the wrong, he needs to (and will have to) face the consequences at school and at home, but if he’s wrongly accused, I am there to defend him as a parent and as a customer. They are doing me no favors - instead, I’m doing them a favor by sending my kids there, at $8,500 per year per kid (high school).

Unbelievable what these idiots will try to pull, especially when they have tenure – they feel untouchable. Someone, quick, call Jay Leno and Conan. Oh, they would have a lot of fun with this.

May 1, 2008 - 11:17 am 92. DartAnon:

Also, after reading more, the level of ignorance of so many of these posts is astounding. People claiming this horrible professor is horrible not because she seemingly has no grasp of the material, any hint of an acceptable pedagogy, and may well be mentally unstable, but simply because she’s INDIAN? People claiming that, despite fascinating and erudite debates that have gone on since the beginning of recorded time, we can simply dismiss anything that isn’t ‘real’ science? People claiming that anything, the sciences included, are pristine, apolitical?

HINT: If you really want to show how irrelevant pomo theory is, maybe you shouldn’t A) make unqualified and blatantly racist statements, B) make reductive claims about the real and unreal, as though centuries of philosophy and scientific discovery and philosophy of science never existed, and C) be so utterly foolish and simpleminded as to think that ANYTHING in this world exists outside the realm of politics and political motives. Maybe an intro. to postmodernism should be a requirement for science majors after all!

May 1, 2008 - 12:11 pm 93. BMoon:

“No, it means she’s a born again Christian, and an advocate of ID.”

Seems you are infected with a slight dose of ID-phobia. Better pay more attention to how politics and post-modernistic jabberwocky, and not metaphysical inquiry by scientists, is truly threatening scientific research. Start with the Sokal affair:

May 1, 2008 - 12:32 pm 94. ed:

if the writing in her book is any way similar to her writing in the excerpt– that should be the worst selling book of all-time!

May 1, 2008 - 1:34 pm 95. Daniel Zimmerman:

Prof. V. should recognize that a Ph.D. confers a target, not a shield. What one flaunts, one must defend–not by an appeal to law, but by individual intellectual combat (preferably relying on jui-jitsu rather than nukes). Those who quake before students’ challenges rather than engaging them as allies in examining the value of those challenges merit no respect; however, they do not automatically deserve disrespect, having themselves obtained their imprimaturs, in some cases, from morons greater than themselves who demanded acquiesence to their idiocies before agreeing to confer upon their victims the mantle of Doctor Infallibilis.

May 1, 2008 - 8:35 pm 96. Billums:

Combine an academic culture in which unwounded feelings are considered a birthright with an aggrieved and mentally unbalanced figure like Prof. Venkatesan, and these things are bound to happen.

May 1, 2008 - 11:19 pm 97. Mickey:

You all may laugh, but the prof may indeed have protection under the “American’s With No Abilities” Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1998. http://hypocrisytoday.com/noabilit.htm.

This is, of course, satire published by a parody newspaper called The Onion. Since some of you apparently feel it is incumbent upon you to make everything a left/right issue (for God sake can we please grow past this?), please note that the tragic lack of a sense of humor sent a number of angry righties to their flaming keyboards to denounce Clinton, leftism, progressivism and all that is–by their self-righteous and humorless standard–unholy, in response to this clearly fictitious story. I think many of them still believe there is an actual law in place to protect American’s with no abilities (which, given their inability to distinguish fact from fiction, you’d think they’d appreciate). What we need are laws to protect those with a disabling lack of perspective, so they can be properly classified and relegated to some harmless position in society. From that standpoint, this egotistical prof is far from alone. What a maroon. One can only hope she bankrupts herself in this pursuit.

May 2, 2008 - 9:52 am 98. Styles:

If you’re out for similar amusement, check out Pootwattle and Smedley (http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/index.htm). Pootwattle and his virtual critic Smedley have classic cases of verbal diarrhea. Be sure not to miss the site’s technical diagnosis.

Want all that Piled Higher and Deeper? The Postmodernism Generator (http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/) delivers such “academese” in considerable bulk.

Of course the larger trouble is cleaning out Dartmouth’s literary-academic stables.

May 3, 2008 - 11:11 am 99. Maria:

The poor thing. Students will say things that aren’t exactly right, usually out of ignorance, so the objective of the professor to teach the students rather than sue them.

May 3, 2008 - 12:40 pm 100. Styles:

If you want similar amusement, check out Pootwattle and Smedley (http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/index.htm). Pootwattle and his virtual critic Smedley have classic cases of academic diarrhea. Be sure not to miss the site’s technical diagnosis.

Want all that Piled Higher and Deeper? The Postmodernism Generator (http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/) delivers “academese” in considerable bulk.

The larger trouble here is Dartmouth’s cleaning out its own literary-academic stables.

May 3, 2008 - 4:17 pm 101. Marc Petrick:

I like shnargley’s answer. Was it generated with the postmodern generator?

May 5, 2008 - 10:07 am 102. computers » Blog Archive » American professor sues her students…for disagreeing with her:

[...] http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball…iticizing-her/ [...]

May 5, 2008 - 10:12 am 103. The paranoid professor: yet another reason to attend college online « The Limits of Experience:

[...] another reason to attend college online Jump to Comments Rogers’s Rules reports on the curious case of Prof. Priya Venkatesan, who has threatened to sue undergrads who gave her negative marks in their evaluations of her [...]

May 5, 2008 - 6:39 pm 104. Sudesh:

I do not agree with Priya Venkatesan’s conduct, sure. Not because that there are no subtle racism involved in that issue. I feel it’s not ethical that teachers sue their students, whatever the reasons may be. Also, after reading all the related stuff, one may almost decide that she did not fully deserve a teacher’s post. Well, I am not sure. One has to see her classes to determine that.
But, it surprises me that almost all e-mails (except one) posted here chose to rant against her. None touched the conduct of the students! Many of them ridiculed her ethnic identity and its American-preferred stereo-types. They are ‘all-knower’ as far as castes, cows and caupeenas (the loin cloth), but innocent of KKKs and red necks! Some of them were amused of her grammar and would like to see her back in a preparatory school.
Somewhere else (the Dartmouth Review?) I saw a post by an anonymous person, urging the lot gathered there that had they been listened to PV’s accent and especially her voice they would have formed a ‘sound’ judgment of their teacher’s qualities. It must have been by one of the rebellious students, I guess. One female student, the most challenging one, asks her how many ‘T’s are there in ‘Ghattaca’, and PV charges that it was a reference on her ‘tenure track’ status. And the chairman of the writing program, who was present there, hastily answers the student “two ‘T’s”. The aggressive male student who led the mutiny, wholesomely took over her position as a teacher to give a highly flourished definition on feminism and duly collected the bounty as applause from the class for doing so. He intended to teach the teacher, the tiny, the browny, the eastern, no!, the South-East-Asian, no!, the Indian alien-female who usurped and appropriated English language. And he has a political leader who repeatedly boastful in keeping up ‘nookeeler’ for nuclear! There are also posts here saying that how bad an Indian in the garbs of professors/doctors. Well, why do you employ them if they are so bad? (I am not from USA.) There must be some valid reasons if one still boasts that America is a competent capitalistic democracy, no?
I think this is why she is going for a litigation, and in a bad manner, in a truly unethical way.
But what about the kids you prefer not to talk about? Are they going to write more complicated po.mo. stuff?

May 6, 2008 - 11:46 pm 105. ravichandran:

Tongue in Cheek
Easy to Seek
As far as a creek
Call it so sneak
Humble and sleek
Egg on, future bleak
Rue it forever meek

(This acrostic gives my impressions as a

May 15, 2008 - 3:51 am 106. An F for Academic Freedom:

[...] Kimball has the scoop over at PajamasMedia.com. He quotes Professor V’s minatory email to her students. In it she merely says she is suing [...]

May 26, 2008 - 9:20 am 107. Common Sensible » An F for Academic Freedom:

[...] Kimball has the scoop over at PajamasMedia.com. He quotes Professor V’s minatory email to her students. In it she merely says she is suing [...]

May 26, 2008 - 8:35 pm 108. the smarter you are, the less likely you are to believe in God (or know how to operate a doorknob) « A Darkling Glass:

[...] you ever actually met a university academic? They’re some of the most functionally useless people on the face of the Earth. Oh, sure, [...]

Jun 13, 2008 - 11:40 am 109. This Is Common Sense » Blog Archive » An F for Academic Freedom:

[...] Kimball has the scoop over at PajamasMedia.com. He quotes Professor V’s minatory email to her students. In it she merely says she is suing [...]

Aug 1, 2008 - 1:04 pm 110. question:

I wonder why Roger wrote “Prof sues students” when the “prof” had not sued anyone. A tenuous grasp on the truth, perhaps.

Aug 5, 2008 - 11:38 am

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