In queer and present danger.

[goblin_marketer]

NEWS: GOP lawmakers: Fire college professors for 'queer theory'

I found this rather ridiculous, but also a bit alarming. I doubt that the impulse is exclusive to Georgia. I'm a grad student and writing instructor at this point, so I'm using queer theory more than teaching it, so I can't really speak to any experiences with this, though I've

Comments

[elorie]

Hey all

[aileen8aalien]

We are discussing academic freedom.

I don't know what utopian graduate program you're in but graduate students are no less inclined to file complaints than undergraduates. I've seen it happen with regards to a Native American Literature class and an African American course. It didn't go to a media outlet or anything, but faculty were asked to defend their courses and the course content.

Graduate classes are not going to be immune from the funding debate just because they are popular.

[elorie]

In my program, we vote with our feet. If nobody is interested in the subject matter, they don't sign up for the class. Conversely, tuition hours pay for courses. I was also a student rep to the graduate committee so we have input about what courses are offered that way as well. Given all that, it would be ridiculous for a student to complain about a course after the fact...maybe that a given course wasn't what it was represented to be, but not that it exists at all. I can imagine someone complaining that something was *not* offered, but not that it *was

[heyiya]

The really interesting thing about all this to me is the way in which fields like queer theory and what the conservative commenter above called "Angry Studies" are actually the places where the ideologies of the state and the academy are analyzed, the politics of what is supposedly 'unmarked' get drawn out--so there are absolutely ways in which the rightwing panics have a point, in that they point out the contradictions of institutionalised radical scholarship.

Of course these are not observations that we can use to defend ourselves...

[snowspinner]

This is, of course, not really a budget issue. There are two faculty who I can identify in this mess: Kirk Elifson and Mindy Stombler. They are, respectively, a full professor and a senior lecturer. A quick bit of research suggests that, together, they're probably costing about $128k a year. Neither seems to have a significant research budget. Assuming (falsely) that their entire salary is paid by taxpayers and not via tuition and University fundraising, between them they cost each and every person in Georgia 1.3 cents a year. This has nothing to do with the budget, and everything to do with the fact that the University as a concept is anathema to the contemporary American conservative movement.

It should also be noted, this is old news. First of all, the two representatives apparently got a media guide published by GSU to help reporters contact appropriate experts for stories confused with a course catalog. Second of all, as of over a week ago, seems to be more recent news on the matter.

[redplum]

It's absurd, of course, that the faculty members had to defend themselves in this way. That said, I totally love it when the supposedly depraved wacko professors turn out to be not only perfectly sane and scholarly, but working in areas that even headline-seeking conservatives find relevant.

[twilit]

Congratulations on a wonderfully incendiary first post. I am enjoying it.