The blogosphere is alight with the story of a (former) professor at Dartmouth named Priya Venkatesan. Teaching is a tough job and I have the highest regard for some of the amazing teachers I’ve had the privilege of learning from over the years. Priya, however, is apparently not quite in that class (pun intended).
The WSJ provides one summary of the case –
Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will “name names.”The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.
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p>What praytell were these unruly students doing to our poor teacher? And, aside from her personal ethnicity, is there a desi angle to the story?
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p>First, it appears that the students in her class shared a good chunk of my aversion to the PostModernist deconstruction of Science –
Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful,” she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. “They’d argue with your ideas.” This caused “subversiveness,” a principle English professors usually favor.Ms. Venkatesan’s scholarly specialty is “science studies,” which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, “teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth.” She continues: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”
In my book, folks like this deserve much of the same scorn as Creationists. One finds a benevolent God having begat a weird brand of science; the other a malevolent Rich / White / Old / Male power structure. All the while, neither seem to have problems with the products of said science ranging from airplanes, to the Internet, to medicine.
A few students’ course evaluations are online and highlight a toxic classroom environment –
If she teaches here… don’t take this course. Period. She defines a terrible prof, she is offended when people ask questions about her lectures and does not grade/give feedback on papers. Grade based solely on if she likes you/ you writing reflects her “sophisticated” ideas.
…Aside from the fact that I learnt nothing of value in this class besides the repeated use of the word “postmodernism” in all contexts (whether appropriate or not) and the fact that Professor Venkatesan is the most confusing/nonsensical lecturer ever, the main problem with this class is the personal attacks launched in class. Almost every member of the class was personally attacked in some form in the class by either intimidation or ignoring your questions/comments/concerns. If you decide to take this class, prepare to NOT be allowed to express your own opinions in class because you have “yet to obtain your Ph.D/masters/bachelors degree”.
And, one particularly brave student sounds like he had enough. Priya – to her credit – tells the tale in a blog interview –
[Priya:] I made the argument that in many cases science and technology did not benefit women, and if women were benefiting science and technology, it was an aftereffect. It was not the goal of science and technology.
…But there was one student who really took issue with this–and he took issue with this, and he made a very–I’d call it a diatribe, and it was sort of like, well–science and technology, women really did benefit from it, and to criticize patriarchal authority on the basis that science and technology benefited patriarchy or men, was not sufficient grounds for this type of feminist claim. And he did this with great rhetorical flourish; it was very invective, it was a very invective sort of tone. And I think what happened afterwards was that some people–I can’t name them, and I don’t know how many there were, but it was a significant number–started clapping for his statements. It was a very humiliating moment to my life; it was extremely humiliating, that my students would clap against me,
Priya goes on to describe how that student caused her to have some sort of breakdown that sent her to the (womyn-friendly?) hospital and miss a week of class. Personally, if I could find that student, I’d contribute to his college beer fund.
What took the crap to a level beyond a run-of-the-mill student teacher disagreement, however, was Priya’s truly bizarre response. She threatened a lawsuit in widely circulated emails to her class –
Dear Student:
As a courtesy, you are being notified that you are being named in a potential class action suit that is being brought against Dartmouth College, which is being accused of violating federal anti-discrimination laws. Please do not respond to this email because it will be potentially used against you in a court of law.
Priya Venkatesan, PhD
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p>And she’s already promised a tell-all book –
[I’m] writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will ‘name names’ so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.”
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p>The Desi angle? As Harvard’s Crimson reports, that card was introduced by Priya –
Last week, a few students in the Dartmouth writing class “Science, Technology, and Society” received a nasty shock. When they checked their inboxes, they learned that their professor, Priya Venkatesan, was planning to sue them for discrimination. Later investigations revealed that she also planned to sue the College and several faculty members, not referring to any particular episode, but mentioning the “hostility” she felt during her time as a professor and saying that “maybe it has something to do with my ethnicity or my gender.”
Let’s be clear – there absolutely are real instances of ethnic and gender discrimination in the world. However, Priya’s screed is a fantastic example of the “race to the 3rd rail” caricature of the argument. When racism/sexism becomes a reflexive, defensive rush for cover, it raises the burden of proof for other folks in other cases where the argument might actually hold merit. Still, I suppose for Priya Venkatesan, PhD, there’s a certain consistency in claiming ethnic/sexual victimization when so much of her teaching is basically about… well… victimization.
[PS – it’s worth noting that the lawsuit appears to have been dropped…]
oh. the irony. vinod did to you what the professor did to her students, which you defend. and its dr. Venkatesan, not priya, btw 😉
(i’m sure there’s some mistake, assuming you didn’t flame. vinod gets attacked here all the time. most of the commentators are liberal and he’s one of the few non-lefties. so he has a thick skin)
Not once did I defend Priya. But belittling her is completely uncalled for. Don’t impose your subjective realities on the world, and try to make them objective truths.
Wow, your sympathy for free speech goes right out the window when it’s not your point of view under consideration. And one post might charitably be called a mistake, multiple posts? If calling out what I believe are problematic aspects of Vinod’s posts are flaming, well then, I hope you will go to Dartmouth this weekend and start a picket line protesting the flaming of Priya.
124 · melbourne desi said
This is a philosophical question, and so would warrant a tangent, but I’ll say this much: You don’t need absolute, objective Truth to construct for yourself a code of ethics or a meaning in life. This is tantamount to saying that all atheists should be essentially catatonic, since without an Absolute to provide them with morals there’s no reason for them to do anything at all (since nature, even if we can absolutely perceive it, doesn’t automatically present any single code of behavior for people to follow.) I don’t need absolutes to experience friendship, love, trust, or meaning in general.
Don’t impose your subjective realities on the world, and try to make them objective truths.
LOL. i see what you’re saying, but the way you said it was choice 😉
153 · Premodernist said
that might explain it. if you went off-issue and did a general critique of his posts he probably deleted you. like a student who talks about philosophy in a biology class would get penalized.
anyway, at least he didn’t take you to court.
NYC Akshay, I agree with your comments in #150. That said, it’s obvious from this thread (and the various links) that some of the PoMo people have taken things too far. When common sense leaves the building it becomes cheap talk. If someone was banging on your car with a baseball bat, would you stop to think whether it’s real or would you wonder if perhaps the way you’re processing the scenario is a result of your social conditioning and imperfect understanding and perceptions of reality? I think you’d take it as real and deal with it accordingly.
And I have no sympathy for this woman. I also don’t like the values and priorities many desi parents parents thrust on their kids that results in way overly intellectual people like this…instead of going out and enjoying the simpler things in life, they’re too busy analysing, deconstructing, and arguing about everything.
151 · rob said
As far as I know, it is in fact the predominant model, at least in the sciences that deal specifically with language and the mind, which state that objective perception is not possible because of the way human perception works. Please elaborate on the analytic, because that isn’t my forte, and so I’m not sure to what other models you’re referring.
How sweet of you. I talked about his comments on postmodernism in a post he himself linked to from the post above. And he is the one who conflated Priya’s problems with a general and uninformed critique of postmodernism. Well, if those are out of bounds, those are indeed strange bounds for the playing field.
I am glad that your protection of free speech, whose demise in academia you so decry, has some wiggle room. Fully appropriate, I am sure.
156 · Manju said
but if vinod would taken poor premodern to quote perhaps the outcome would have better? after all, the courts are getting all teary-eyed at the mere thought of discrimination*, and vinod would have been made to pay restitution for prejudicial censorship of premodern’s liberal views, wouldn’t he? free speech, as you observe, is only a tangential concern for judges these days. and apparently, sepia too.
(see ledbetter v. goodyear)
As far as I know, it is in fact the predominant model, at least in the sciences that deal specifically with language and the mind, which state that objective perception is not possible because of the way human perception works. Please elaborate on the analytic, because that isn’t my forte, and so I’m not sure to what other models you’re referring.
analytic philosophy is the dominant paradigm in the english speaking world. is the academy so incestuous that people don’t even know about it in some parts???
159 · Premodernist said
of course it has wiggle room. first of all, the 1st ammendment doesn’t appply to private actors. it is the professor trying to use the state to silence students under the guise of title 7 (or 9, i forget). that would be unconstitutional, if a court sided with her.
darthmounth has a contractual free-speech with its students. they can punish a student, for example, for going off-topic or being rude in class, but they cannot viewpoint discriminate. there are a lot of nuances, but the professors claims that being unreceptive of “French narrative theory†amounts to a hostile working environment would make the liberal university unworkable.
157 · Amitabh said
Completely true, Amitabh. As I stated in my first post, I think the argument about objective reality isn’t something for dismissing and analyzing everything that comes along. For me, it’s important when it comes to exposing the darker sides of scientific materialism and humanism, among other ideologies. For example, when eugenics advocates dictate, based on science, that physically/mentally weaker people should be forcibly sterilized (as they did here in America in the 1920s) because society would be healthier that way, or when fascism dictates its will, based on humanistic rationality. It’s that kind of domination based in “truth” that I feel is mostly relevant to this discussion.
I’m not trying to be coy–I mean the mainstream philosophy of language stuff (which isn’t PoMo). Not my area of expertise, but Hilary Putnam would be an obvious exemplar.
161 · razib said
The English-speaking world (I’m assuming you mean America and England) is definitely not the most popular part right now when it comes to philosophy, at least in University-land.
Dude, your e-mail address says NYU–are you seriously claiming that any of these PoMo people will, 100 years from now, be read more than Thomas Nagel? If you think that, we truly inhabit different planets.
168 · Premodernist said
i see why you where deleted. that’s a first ammendment right too.
Sounds like my namesake has yet to reach a level of maturity that allows others to have a differing opinion without taking it as a personal affront. Unfortunately, I have met many women like this, including an ex-boss of mine, also an indian woman, who don’t like their authority challenged, especially in a public forum. Sad that it had to come to this. Also sad that the colleges are semi-allowing a forum for this. Especially the university she decamped to!
164 · rob said
I think the older Putnam would have agreed with me, for the most part:
“The doctrine that there are mental presentations which necessarily refer to external things is not only bad natural science; it is also bad phenomenology and conceptual confusion.”
Newer Putnam wouldn’t agree entirely, being more of a direct realist. Unfortunately I haven’t read his work at this stage. I can, however, say, that we would definitely be at a standstill as far as disagreement.
I should add, though, that more recent neuroscience suggests that the process of perception is closely related to the process of dreaming and of evoking mental imagery. They say that the same part of the brain is used in all three processes, and that therefore perception is not a direct reception of external reality, which, if you accept it, debunks the newer Putnam and direct realism in general.
No more harder than claiming that all science is subjective.
Can a PoMo actually recognize rain ? Or will it be something that is decided by ROWM?
of course I do. I live in Victoria. What did you expect.
I cant meet myself. Oh wait, that is possible in your fantasy world. But then I live in a real world. Byeee Byee my dear avatar.
172 · Premodernist said
if the professor expelled a student from her class for insulting her intelligence, i’d defend her right to do so. if she let the student back in class, like vinod has graciously done with you, i’d say she has a thick skin indeed
167 · rob said
You need to specify which thinkers. “These PoMo people” are all in disagreement with each other about many things and don’t represent a singular movement in philosophy, just like the Analytics, which is why I don’t like the term PoMo in general. If to you, PoMo is just about the lack of absolute truth, then Nietzsche would fit, and he is and will continue to be read more then Nagel (who I think is quite interesting.) Depending on your definition, different thinkers would fit or be rejected. Certainly, thinkers like Foucault have influenced a great deal already, are read in a vast amount of disciplines, and are growing in popularity, but others, like Irigaray, are generally restricted to the old ivory tower.
One of my fav Nagel quotes: “From eternity’s point of view there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.”
Well, if the dear leader had not expelled a student for raising critiques in the first place, even if they were sharply worded, maybe the student wouldn’t have felt compelled to make gratuitous references like in #169, which again, was only in response to personal comments in #152.
Whatever. A bad, mocking, agenda-driven post about a sad story, and a ridiculous discussion to boot. Let’s keep the insightful “fuck the mad lady” comments coming. Me, I won’t disturb the echo chamber any longer.
OK, wow–very nice answer! I may take up your e-mail invitation, but not this week, if that’s ok. . . .
I think in a 100yrs they’ll teach PoMo at IIT as part of their new humanities curriculum: The Decline of Western Civilization. When they learn that the relativity of truth was a postulate necessary to understand non-western civilizations and ethnic minorities, all the kids will double over in laughter.
This prof. is on a powertrip, she behaves like an Air India hostess circa 1983. NU is a pitstop in her descent. Next stop Pomona…
179 · louiecypher said
she serves indians last?
Hmmmm-that’s open to at least two different interpretations, I think–care to elaborate? I promise not to be unfair if I subsequently elaborate the other one!
Oh, c’mon guys–this is such small potatoes–I mean, seriously, fly Thai Air and spend a few days in Bangkok, and you will never make these hair-splitting comparisons again, yes? 😉
181 · rob said
well, one offshoot of PoMo is cultural relativism, that the perspectival view of truth is a moral and theoretical postulate necessary to truly understand non-western cultures. but the irony is that not only is this idea itself western, but almost uniquely western in its influence.
so what is advertised as a way of getting out of your prejudices represents a profound cultural prejudice itself.
so rob, cultural relativism as a reaction against western hegemony is very problematic, as the concept itself represents a profoundly western ideal. whereas the conservatives who simply believe western civilization superior, actually have more in common with out parents.
PoMo has a lot of conundrums.
185 · Manju said
J.Lo, however, is perfect
Premodernist@168:
Paging Freud! Sigmund Freud! Please pick up the white phone!
o crap. i quoted myself. commenturbation. i’m sleepy.
academic gossip!!!!!! how could i miss this party? 🙂
in particular let us start off with NYC Akshay:
ok, wrong way to catch my attention… but i disagree. i don’t know your background, but it doesn’t seem to me you have a grounding in mathematical (or any real) logic or empirical sciences—or you have misrepresented yourself grossly in the process of dumbing things down.
ok, with you on this one with one clarification. we think of a language as a “set of axioms”—more formally (and more generally) languages are a subset of all “possibilities”/”possible realities”. and if you are speaking for formal logic, why aren’t images and concepts symbols too?
here is the first part of departure imo between hard science and soft science (and for the record, i am with the people who have contempt for the soft variety). “whatever the table is”, it is not relevant in any hard science—so this woozy thing about the thought of a table not being existent but a mental construct is no big deal. to clarify: empirical scientists fit hypotheses to observations—all she would do is to build a set of theorems for the table that will allow her to answer certain questions about it: “will it hurt if i bang on it?” “how do i move it?” “how hard will it be to move it?”. now it doesn’t matter what the table really is.
yes, this is attached to the language (axioms) of choice, but let us not get wishy washy with “exist completely separate from our minds” without knowing what the hell we are talking about (what is “mind”?). but we have freedom in picking the language (see also second point after the next quote from you). moving on to your punchline:
two points: first—you say it is impossible to represent the other completely—why is it? what you are claiming is that no matter what set of symbols i choose, what language i pick, there will be something with the table i haven’t captured in the language—and that requires proof. note that the inability to prove is not a proof of non existence. and analogies like the one you have are definitely not proofs. this point however is a source of very nice results in math, irrelevant for most empirical science, and a source of outrageously ridiculous statements in soft logic.
second—we only ask “is there a language that gives me explanations (theorems) for all i have observed” in hard sciences. and that answer is a qualified yes. if you ask “will we be able to explain everything we observe?”, it is very interesting. the premise is “so far, we believe yes”. but we will know if (and when) we fail.
135 · Manju said
Hahaha. Try being investigated by the Pentagon for serving peanut butter sandwiches, holmes. Yeah, the PC police is terrifying!
183 · Manju said
and lo, did FGM for first-year’s become part of the mandatory curriculum…has someone been cuddling with David Horowitz a bit too long? Maybe the heady ambrosia that drips so slowly from his objective whiskers can sustain this sort of fantasy, but most adults can easily tell when value judgments begin and when they stop (during the course of any class).
Prof: Sati was…it went on during…
Student: Oh noes! My arugula-chompin, bacon-disdaining elitist professor just failed to condemn, to my satisfaction, what is obviously a horrific practice–he/she must be a cultural relativist! Where’s my Bill of Student’s Rights blankeeee???? I wonder if I can transfer out after only 15 minutes of this one class?
136 · vinod said
I believe the greatest scientist of all time would say, who really cares? Does knowing the absolute speed of light improve human life one nanowhatever? What does the absolute speed of light have to do with growing food, or negotiating mundane decisions with that elusive somebody you’re willing to put up with long enough to have your offspring reach a viable age (dualistically hetoronormative only for the sake of argument here), or any of those other stupid neurochemical subjective bullshit phenomena like love and death and child-pain and finding some kind of subjective meaning to a laughable existence in an indifferent universe?
165 · NYC Akshay said
Take your French narrative theory back to French, commie! This land here fries freedom, not French. We saved yurn asses in dubya dubya dubya dot too. Ifn it werent fur us an’ our atomic bomb you’d be spekkin zee deutsch, I mean Japanian. Heil science!
Bigger better faster more because we CAN. Period.
Most “science” in this country is funded by the Pentagon. Discuss.
“Reason” is only one way of thinking and it has its limits. (See gothic literature, particularly Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Chaos has room to fit order, but order cannot contain chaos. Like rectangles and squares.
All you PoMo betches need a lobotomy. I mean Lithium. I mean Valium. I mean Prozac. I mean Lipitor. I mean Depakote.
Science will solve all our problems. We are on an unstoppable trajectory towards progress, fuck yeah!
Are you in, or are you in the way?
just want to say here that post-modernism cannot be reduced to just a critique of rich, white men (!!?) as many posters here have been doing. that is unbelievable reductionism (and may not even been an implication of all ‘postmodern theories’) — something like saying that the most significant feature of fascism was to get the trains running on time.
This is a bogus argument. It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with human nature, and, as such, applies to every single discipline. If kids take drugs at school you don’t call it “exposing the darker side of education” but treat it as a human/social problem.
And I cannot believe you are still carrying on about objectivity. Just because scientists themselves had misgivings about objectivity does not mean that anything came to a screeching halt. Science has continued to improve because it relies on hypotheses and theories and you can test the consequences of these theories. Newton himself said he does not know what gravity is, but he could tell us how it would behave. He was able to tie the phenomenon on earth to the motion of the moon and the planets, as well as to the ebb and flow of tides. Okay fine, maybe predictions about the tides could be half a second off because we don’t really know what gravity is or what the earth is for that matter, but is this what you’re fussing about?
And thank god for bytewords.
196 · Divya said
no, but thanks for asking anyway.
manju, this is for you. to show that moral subjectivists have been around much before postmodernists.
can you please put up a new post?
Premodernist –
and
and
you’re free to disagree with Vinod but, when your content meanders into personal insults on a blogger or another commenter, they get deleted. And this Intern is quick on the delete key.
Keep it up and you get banned.
Some of your other comments manage to provide constructive input without hurling personal insults so you clearly know how to behave (some of the time).
The only thing postmodernism has going for itself is that it happens to be on the “right” side of all the fences, opposing inequalities of all sorts, social class exploitation, challenging stereotypes, homophobia and what not. This does not have any bearing on the philosophy of course since people who oppose postmodernism may also have their hearts in the same place. But PoMo rides on the coattails of the current intellectual climate and has been exploiting it for all it’s worth. Basically it’s all about declaring how wonderful the emperor looks in his fantastic new clothes. This was pretty much proven by Alan Sokal, a physicist, back in the 90’s, when just for a lark he submitted a paper for one of the most prestigious PoMo academnic journals. It was a satire of the kind of garbage churned out by desconstructions, where he deliberately used all kinds of unsound and invalid arguments peppered with quotations from important PoMo theorists and concluded that quantum physics substantiates the aesthetic, ethical and political values propounded by PoMo. The paper was subjected to peer review by the fantastic PoMo theorists, easily passed muster and was published in their journal. Only then Sokal admitted his deception . . .
89 · Manju said
While I appreciate your point of view, I have to say–I don’t understand how anyone could have been brought up and gone to school in the U.S. and hasn’t faced any sort of dissention in their life. I don’t care how closely one follows an idealogy–unless they’ve been shut in a box, they should expect a reasonable amoung of discourse in any college class. No one is that sheltered…which is why my vote still goes towards the need for her to seek therapy. She’s got major self-confidence and psychological problems.
196 · Divya said
Actually, it wasn’t submitted to peer review, which was what caused the controversy. The journal had no proper peer review system at the time, which, of course, is shameful. For the record, though, Sokal isn’t exactly knowledgable about the details of any of the “PoMo” work he criticized, as he admits himself. If you want a balanced perspective, you should read the various responses to his work, and if you want valid critiques of “postmodernism”, the science world isn’t quite the place to find them.
And anyone who has negative issues with every single one of her colleagues in the lab she worked is seriously lacking in the interpersonal skills department.
Premodernist took a stand on behalf of Dr. Venkatesan that few were willing to do and I appreciate it.
SM Intern, I’m not sure that Premodernist’s criticisms of Vinod weren’t in the same key of mean-spiritedness as this Vinod comment:
NYC Akshay, thanks for sharing your mind. It’s been thrilling!