More of a momento than a rant or opinion piece. Below is some excerpts from Western Standard's "Nuttiest Professors" article which seeks to denounce the general state of academia in Canada and then name some names behind its downfall! I was proud to see York sporting two profs on the short-list! One being my very own Technopolitics professor Shannon Bell! I hope she reads this as an honour, as I did, and not as Grandpa and Grandma Conservative will be!
SHANNON BELL, ASSOC. PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, YORK UNIVERSITYUniversities today are hothouses of intellectual repression, encumbered by censorious codes stifling free speech and weakened by employment-equity programs that force faculties to favour diversity over accomplishment. Just ask Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary who was hounded from the presidency of Harvard this year after suggesting publicly that males and females may have innately different capacities for science and math. Or Margaret Somerville, the distinguished McGill ethicist, nearly denied an honourary doctorate from Ryerson University this summer after faculty protested her skepticism toward same-sex marriage (she got the degree but several professors turned their backs on the ceremony).
Today, there are probably just as many, or more, left-wing professors than a generation ago. If our situation is similar to American universities (where there's been extensive research on the issue), most faculties are tilting so far left they're lucky they haven't slid into the Pacific. One study last year found that three quarters of all faculty members at U.S. colleges considered themselves left-wing (as much as 87 per cent at Ivy League schools and even higher in the humanities).
Political science has never been this risqué. But Bell doesn't exactly cover filibusters and Senate reform; try post-contemporary theory, fast feminism, sexual politics, cyberpolitics, identity politics and violent philosophy. The self-described "performance artist" holds workshops teaching the art of "female ejaculation" (also available on video for those off-campus). In 1998, she made news testifying in defence of a sadomasochist prostitute, saying such deviant sexual behaviour was "therapeutic" and that she was an experienced dominatrix herself. In 2000, she was found by police in an illegal lesbian bathhouse. In class, Bell says she dresses provocatively to get a rise out of her students. Early in the term, for example, she usually dons over-the-top feminine outfits. "Then, around the end of October, things are getting intense in terms of their assignments," she's said. "And I move into solid leather for about a month."
So kudos to Shannon and thanks for offering the best class this semester!
The full text of the Western Standard article can be read (after registration) here.
2 comments:
Dude,
Your prof sounds very interesting, which is much better than our "cool leftist prof" who makes out with people at the Well. Or so I heard.
Are you done exams now?
Profs decked out in leather and others making out with students in the well? What happened? I spent 5 years around boring profs and as soon as I'm gone the Canadian University scene turns into Animal House. Now I have to go back for another degree.
Cheers
Shayne
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