Given the discussions lately about “free speech” and campuses, I just noticed Laura Kipnis has written a book – for those interested in various viewpoints about the “impact” of Title IX directives on campuses.
Is seems almost inevitable that a professor teaching a “Men in Literature” class is doomed.
Sorry, the article has already lost all credibility to me.
Sorry, I didn’t really read the article but now I want to re-watch “Pride and Prejudice” for Colin Firth…there are a lot of great “men in literature”! 
Hope the campus thought police don’t get me!
The article may be suspect–after all, look at the source–but that doesn’t reflect on the book.
No the source is secondary - but I “like” her writing and generally her POV so I think it would be an interesting read especially after what she went through at Northwestern. If the though of the National Review makes you gasp, here’s a review from the NYT LOL. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/books/review-laura-kipnis-unwanted-advances.html although my father who was so far left he thought Hubert Humphrey was conservative loved to read the National Review. Educating oneself on other viewpoints is never a negative is what I learned from him - OK lecture over.
I’m surprised to hear that professors at Northwestern have been prohibited from dating undergraduates for only a few years. I thought that that kind of prohibition has been around a long time. Rightly so. I don’t care if the undergraduate isn’t in any of their classes. It’s bad enough that so many professors have seemed for so long to view sleeping with grad students as a perk of their positions, without making undergraduates fair game.
I am also surprised that faculty at Northwestern have just recently been prohibited from dating undergraduates. I don’t think it is a good idea for faculty to date undergrads–not so much because of the “power” differential, though that is real, as because it just seems likely to result in disappointment. It is relatively easy to impress an undergraduate (of a particular type) with knowledge and experience. The undergrad does not have any idea where he/she will be in terms of knowledge and experience in a decade–quite possibly past the faculty member.
I don’t think it is a good idea for an adult student to date their professor, or an employer to date their boss, or a patient to date their physician but I don’t think it should be unilaterally be prohibited. I think adults should be able to make their own decisions. Relationships can be messy experiences under any circumstance.
Within a university, it is desirable not only that things be fair, but that they appear to be fair. If a student is dating a professor in a department, then the other students in courses in that department are likely to wonder whether the grading is entirely fair. This holds, even if the professor in question is not offering the course, it’s just his/her colleagues.
Sure and a university, like a business can “prohibit” dating between a boss and a report or a healthcare system to prohibit patients from dating doctors but generally you don’t see rules that prohibit co-workers from dating or staffers from dating and I don’t see an issue with college adults dating profs or adjuncts or TAs who aren’t directly educating the dating student… while those prohibitive policies are not ones that I’m overwhelmingly “for”, policies like that don’t get me all hot and bothered either. If people are going to get into a relationship they are probably going to do it regardless of the “rules” and given the risks and that is on them.
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@momofthreeboys Actually, I read the National Review quite often. I loved the late Florence King. It’s just that they have a very definite and very particular point of view which is likely to color the language used in a review of a book, whether positive or negative. The same is true of other publications, obviously. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just means that it should be taken into account.
Yes, I’ve mentioned before I grew up in a home with parents with wildly different perspectives, opinions, religious beliefs, political beliefs…so it’s difficult for me not to subscribe to feeds that have different biases - some that I agree with some that I don’t. My parents were avid readers of economics, politics, philosophy so the books and magazines were always there from me as soon as I could read. I don’t think of Laura Kipnis as particularly controversial but then she’s my age and I feel a certain Zeitgesit when I read her writings. I sometimes get this sense “we” olders are enigmas to the “youngers” and perhaps visa versa. There’s a wonderful article in the New Yorker about Kipnis from earlier this week that when I read I kept thinking “that’s me, that’s me.” I’d love to drink wine (of coffee) or watch an episode of “Girls” with her.
I don’t agree with Northwestern’s approach with the investigation – it smacks of retaliation for her views. But I would not be surprised if there were more to the story – I know there is more to the whole Gouws affair which is also referenced in the linked article. Of course those additional details are conveniently omitted.
I became familiar with Laura Kipnis many years ago when I skimmed her book Against Love which eviscerates the institution of marriage and monogamous relationships. I was curious as I have always been somewhat of a serial monogamist preferring the comforts of committed relationships. After reading that book and some interviews she has done with press, I struggle with whether she is another provocateur looking to sell books or if she expects to be taken seriously.
On the issue of professor/student relationships she of course supports that freedom as she is on record as stating she had a relationship with a professor while in college. In an interview she said something to the effect of in my day dating your professors was “part of the curriculum.”
My real issue with her though is that while she places a lot of blame on women, she seems to have really low expectations as far men are concerned. I suspect the blame is because we dare to expect more and thus receive more from the men in our lives. In another interview she recounts with some sort of “fondness” an event that she interpreted as “flirtation” from a man who had some prominence in her field of study – I assumed form the context that it was a colleague. She recalls how he threw a drink on her and then either began kissing or biting her leg – I forget which. I don’t know too many women that would view that as any sort of “flirtation.” But she is somehow more enlightened than rest of us and understands men better than we do.
She writes a lot about marriage, relationships, sexuality and feminism. Yet as far as I can tell she has never been married and does not have children whose emotional well being might be of concern – it’s easy and convenient for her to place little value on marriage and monogamy. But it does beg the question of what her expertise in all these areas is based upon. Perhaps she has been misquoted or I am erroneously interpreting her writings, but for hashing out issues relating to relationships and marriage I’ll take my friends and a bottle of wine any day – they at least are coming from a place of personal experience.
I always wondered if she had married and/or had children. I am the only woman of my five “best” college buddies that actually married and had children, they used to joke and call me the suburban guerrilla when we were young even though I never lived in suburbia and would never live in suburbia (although two are now married in their late fifties which I find infinitely fascinating) so if she’s not married or doesn’t have children doesn’t change much for me. But I don’t know that you need to be “married” to a man to understand “men” and I don’t think you have to hate men to be bemused sometimes at the differences between men and women - to me it’s like the difference between cats and dogs, infinitely fascinating. Someone in college education is very aware of young people and how they tick so her not having children probably has little bearing since there is still that comparative experience of what your life was like at that point in maturity and how kids think and act today, they just aren’t “your” kids. I think she expects more from women because she is a strong woman…I get that, you don’t want to see women allow themselves to be infantilized or treated like a hot house flower - and I think everyone’s exposé writing comes from some experience somewhere at some time. I’d still like to have a glass of wine with her.
I have no issue whatsoever with women who decide not to marry or have children, none at all. But I do take issue with someone lecturing other women about how marriage is a “gulag” that smothers people with restrictions. Oh, and then there is the “emotional stagnation” and “deadened desires” part that she references.
Seems to me Kipnis is all about personal freedom and doing what you want when you want. That all sounds great, in fact really great – except that some of the most fulfilling things in life require you to think beyond yourself and put some limits on your personal freedom. In exchange you gain other things you might value – emotionally healthy children, a secure family life and a partner. I am all for women making their own choices but don’t indict me for mine. The institution of marriage has survived for thousands of years for a reason -it provides the social foundation for procreation.
I do have to correct a statement I posted earlier about her student/professor relationships. Kipnis did not go on record stating she had a relationship with one of her own professors, she is on record as stating that as a professor she had a relationship with a student. Her other quote was not about “dating” professors in her college days but:
Now Kipnis is being sued by the same young lady who apparently doesn’t want a job anytime soon. Sounds pretty flimsy unless Harper Collins employs the same fact checkers as Rolling Stone.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Laura-Kipnis-Is-Sued-Over/240105