<p>"When scholars were recently given the chance to refute student criticism posted on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com, a cult-hit television series, 'Professors Strike Back,' was born. The show, which has professors responding on camera to undergraduate gripes such as 'boring beyond belief,' made its debut in October on mtvU, a 24-hour network broadcast to more than 7.5 million students on American college campuses. 'Its our dominant show driving half of the traffic to mtvU now,' said Stephen Friedman, general manager of the network. 'It gets more than our music premieres.'"</p>
<p>This is pretty interesting stuff, and lends hope to not only the poor profs, victims of their childish students' rants, to become substantially more accountable not merely to their dept chair or dean but to the parents and public paying their salaries.</p>
<p>nngmm, I thought the essay was just another well written discussion of media at the beginning, but boy did it change mid stream. I LOVED it and have already sent it to three other professors. Great find and thank you a lot!</p>
<p>As for sex with students, eewwww, but to find an intellectual partner - that's heavenly.</p>
<p>I think he goes a little overboard in claiming that American popular culture does not recognize soul-love. The teacher-student and intellectual-soulmates relationships are celebrated to a fare-thee-well, but not so much in the strictly academic context. How many "Coach" movies have we seen? (And has there ever been one where Coach slept with the star quarterback?) How about all those gruff-but-golden-hearted bosses? Managing editors, DAs, police commanders, platoon leaders, generals, Chiefs of Surgery . . . . (What does the author think House is about?) And the world of fantasy is thick with them: Gandalf, Aragorn, Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobe, Ged, Estraven. Then there's Buffy's Watcher, Giles, and the lexicon of evil represented by his reflective counterparts -- The Master, The Mayor, The Professor, The God -- none of whom slept with their students, either, despite there being evil and sexiness on both sides. (Buffy also systematically plumbed the evils of smart students without teachers.) And I won't even start on "buddy" movies. The erotic aspects of education and common intellectual pursuit are well-represented in the popular imagination, just not in English class.</p>
<p>I will also say that the danger of having "brain sex" slop over into "sex sex" may be (or was) a little more common and a little more destructive than the author allows. When you're lighting fires all the time, sometimes something gets burnt. That used to be accepted as part of life.</p>
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I will also say that the danger of having "brain sex" slop over into "sex sex" may be (or was) a little more common and a little more destructive than the author allows. When you're lighting fires all the time, sometimes something gets burnt. That used to be accepted as part of life.
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<p>I agree. And students have crashes on their teachers from elementary school on to grad school. Intellect is power, and power is erotic. I think it is the responsibility of the mentor not to take advantage of it.</p>
<p>The professor to whom I was closest in college, my advisor for several years, was well known for propositioning female students (the smartest ones, not necessarily the prettiest ones). It wasn't because he was abusing his power, exactly; it was more because he was screwed up and sad. As far as I know, few if any accepted his advances, and as far as I know he never retaliated. But it was a bad situation, nonetheless: One had to be a lot more self-confident and secure than most female students, especially undergraduates, were to hang out around him and to brush off the pressure graciously. So few of my female classmates got to have the kind of relationship I had with him, which of course wasn't fair at all.</p>
<p>(The same kind of thing happened to men, sometimes, with gay professors. I also saw it -- once -- with a gay woman professor, although I am pretty sure in that case it was a one-time aberration, not a long-term pattern of conduct. I can't remember ever even hearing about straight women faculty doing anything like it.)</p>
<p>The whole situation was very distortive. The professor in question was brilliant, impressive, famous, powerful, and pitiable. There was a pervasive fear that he would be hounded and humiliated, which created a sort of Wall of Silence around his conduct -- something in which most or all of his victims participated, at least until many years later. So it was hard to change things. I think he got better as he got older, but I've seen published reports of his conduct a decade after I knew him that sounded exactly like what I observed.</p>
<p>I'm sure some of that still happens, but I think less so as women tend to be more assertive and are more likely to report this kind of behavior. Prof friends have also told me that codes of conduct are enforced much more strictly these days.</p>
<p>I thought that it was a wonderful essay, too, but I'm not so sure that the link between igniting intellectual passion and kindling sexual passion is as close or inevitable as the author. I agree w/ bethivt that young women are probably better educated and more savvy about how such power relationships work.</p>
<p>There's another thread going on now about those "hot peppers" on Ratemyprofess*rs.com; kind of puts them in a whole new light if Deresiewicz is on target!</p>
<p>It may also be worth remembering that not all of these situations are tragedies or horror stories. It's not fashionable to notice, but there are several people I know who put soul AND body into their mentor relationships, and got wonderful careers out of it, without any apparent long-term damage to their psyches. Sometimes the results are even unexpected. One friend married someone she met when he was her supervisor in an internship. Twenty-five years later, she is a globe-trotting Master of the Universe with a seven-figure income, and he spent the bulk of his career working part time and making certain their children had a loving home.</p>
<p>I had similar situations to what JHS mentioned. It got annoying to have male profs make propositions and then offer "rewards". I did most of my mentoring with female profs/MDs. I'm quite relieved that female students find it easier to be more assertive these days.</p>