This is my response to story of coo-coo Professor Priya Venkatesan who threatened to sue her students over harassment when she tried to teach!
All I want to say - without in any way supporting the profoundly bizarre and odd act of attempting to sue your students for being their silly, young selves - is that, if you have never been a woman of color attempting to teach in the humanities (or any other discipline for that matter) in one of these Ivy League institutions, then its going to be extremely difficult bordering on impossible for you to understand what it is like in these environments, and why this poor woman may have snapped like she did. Let me explain:
There is an inherent competitive hostility (even with/against a student's professor/instructor) because it is The Ivys. Then add in the "naturally" socialized prejudices/biases and argumentative predilections of young people who are in fact untutored and unschooled but believe themselves already perfectly brilliant - after all they were valedictorian of their school or whatever - and you have a recipe for some often very difficult classroom moments as an instructor/professor of color. And being a woman can often make things ten times worse! Heck, in discussing teaching pedagogy, we have to make sure we cover the chapter titled:
"How to deal with an extremely stubborn and hostile student who is targeting you for harassment - probably/possibly due to race or gender - in a neutral and diplomatic fashion"
And this is even if you are teaching something very rote and basic and widely accepted. In the past with difficult students, teaching simple reading/writing techniques, I have had to literally blanket the table/desk at the front of the classroom in paper/texts from other, respected, published, usually White sources that echo whatever I've been trying to teach, just to get students to lay off! Even now I can hear myself saying, "Look, Plato started doing this first, not me, and that's why the university feels it is important for you to learn." Sigh. It can drive one insane.
That said, I have pity on her, although I think she only made things worse with all this lawsuit business. She just should have written it off as a bad semester and moved on! You can't win every group over every term.
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