As the saga of the disposition of the neurotic Louisiana State University law professor continues to drag out, it tells us more about the media and higher education than the actual demerits of the subject in question.
That guy ensconced at the Paul M. Hebert School of Law, Ken Levy, almost a month ago found himself suspended from teaching duties because of some unfortunate remarks of his. Besides insulting a politician or two in a semester-beginning lecture, he also managed to convey the impression that students with different political sensibilities than his needed reeducation that could begin with grading them on that criterion and that he could toss them into the hoosegow if they dared record his lectures (the complex legal question aside, he had no such authority), citing controversy that percolated from somewhat less openly jaundiced recorded remarks by one of his colleagues.
After retaining counsel, Levy alleged his remarks were in jest, which he appeared to mean served as a prophylactic against any unprofessional offense. To which I say, pulling out the old as-I’ve-been-teaching-in-higher-education-nearly-four-decades card, even if joking around it was unprofessional enough to warrant not just his suspension, but dismissal. You don’t even need four decades, not even four minutes, as a higher education instructor to know you don’t levy, even if a joking fashion, threats against assignment of a course grade that don’t have a direct relationship to a student’s demonstration of course mastery. Simply, too much is at stake for a student when it comes to a grade, where even a letter grade difference could mean the difference between staying in or out of school, retaining or not retaining financial aid, eligibility for job recruitment possibilities, and the like.
That noted, since his initial suspension in the course of legal hearings to ascertain whether LSU legally suspended him with pay, even more evidence has surfaced about his competency to teach effectively, in the form of a test question that in previous centuries might be referred to as bawdy. Briefly, the question graphically set up a scenario where students had to determine whether criminal behavior had occurred involving copulation with a jack-o-lantern, followed by recording and disseminating sexual abuse of minors, and with a direct insult to Republicans thrown in.
Demonstrating yet again that sophistry and irrelevancy often rise to the top in legal argumentation and decision-making, his mouthpiece argued nothing was wrong with the material in the question because a lawyer potentially could run into all of this in the profession, to which the judge assented in ruling Levy back into the classroom. A day later, the First Circuit Court of Appeals vetoed that.
Note the red herring shift in force here. The issue isn’t that students may encounter cases involving sexually-oriented criminal behavior, but in the presentation of these kinds of cases by the question material demonstrates a behavior sanctionable by the university. Keep in mind the idea of the university (to paraphrase John Henry Cardinal Newman) is to enlarge and illuminate the mind to view many things at once. But you can’t do that if you alienate your audience from the start by appealing to vulgarity (mistaken for cleverness) and insults (mistaken for virtue signaling).
All too often these days academia ends up the refuge of those who use instruction as a kind of therapy, to allow modes of behavior dressed in the trappings of teaching, making the classroom a playground for indulging in the instructor’s psychological insecurities. For example, undoubtedly one can write a question that more clinically and less floridly, and without partisan slurs (that have nothing to do with the subject), makes the same inquiries. You would want to do that because a more salacious rendering distracts some students of more delicate sensibilities while the political insult distracts others of that partisan stripe. Your job is to help students to learn and express that learning, not to throw up impediments via shock and provocation.
Why would an instructor do this? (For readers with college experience, think about these archetypes you may have encountered in the course of your studies.) Maybe he fancies himself a rebel who believes untraditional discourse signifies he is more creative and imaginative than the herd. Or sees himself as a provocateur who to change academia must thumb his nose at it through attention-grabbing rhetoric and actions. Or maybe he views himself as an academic Übermensch, to whom the rules don’t apply and he can take this power trip that disparages the beliefs of many of his students with impunity. Or perhaps he conceives of himself as the “cool” professor, who imagines such discourse increases his popularity among the students as it has him climb down from the ivory tower to become more relatable to their supposedly more earthy lives. There are others unrelated to the conceit that lies behind those so far explicated, even less salutary, that deal with neuroses.
The point is posturing in these forms detracts from effective teaching. And when these have the effect of denigrating students for reasons beyond academic performance, if not creating a hostile learning environment, that is something for which a university can bounce from its hallowed halls even a tenured professor.
Yet reading much of the media coverage of this protracted case frames it in free expression terms that in reality don’t form the basis for his suspension, implying if not asserting that LSU is trying to punish the cretin for his political opinions, which included in class vulgar exhortations about conservative elected officials. Some, like the Baton Rouge Advocate, at least mention that LSU’s disciplinary attempts involve comportment, while other like the far left-funded Louisiana Illuminator web site entirely and dishonestly ignores the basis for LSU’s action. This all is done as a method to advance a false narrative that somehow the rise of conservative elected officials that now dominate Louisiana government and hold majorities in the federal government threatens free expression and cows what should be the bastions of that, higher education.
Quite the opposite. For this guy is but the tip of the iceberg. His insecurities may have been such that he too openly and stupidly displayed them, but there are plenty of others more circumspect populating academia, both in Louisiana and across the nation. And as academia has sympathy for their political views, ordinarily it won’t bother with them no matter how much they may invest in indoctrination instead of (see Newman above) education. This creates an echo chamber of orthodoxy that experiences excavation only when its excesses become illuminated to the larger world, which introduces the real heroes of it all, the students whose recording and revelation of class materials exposed the poverty of Levy’s approach to instruction. It takes courage to enter into conflict with a guy who holds tremendous power over your future, and that is fortified by knowing in government you have elected officials that will hear you out and will apply pressure for a fair resolution of the conflict. Knowing that greater capacity exists to expose idiocy in the classroom has the effect of exposing more of that idiocy, which then at least drives more of that idiocy underground and away from interfering with genuine education.
In other words, maybe having a Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who appoints members of the LSU Board of Supervisors confirmed by a state Senate with a GOP supermajority, makes LSU (who like most higher education institutions otherwise practices “don’t ask/don’t tell” in this regard) pursue more aggressively punishment of faculty stupidity in the classroom. In that respect, the real story the media is missing is how conservatives controlling elective offices instead of threatening free expression are restoring the idea of free inquiry thereby enhancing the mission of superior education within academia.
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