Jan Richman had seen the work of some hyperactive imaginations in her time as an art-school writing instructor. This was something else entirely. The quiet freshman from Seattle who sat in the back row had submitted a disturbing short story, a fictitious first-person account of a young serial killer. The story was so rife with gruesome details about sexual torture, dismemberment and bloodlust that the teacher panicked, wondering what to do now that she had already handed out copies to her class to take home and read. [...] Before the week was out, the student was expelled and sent home, the instructor was fighting for her job, and many students and faculty were left wondering about issues of artistic and academic freedom in the post-Columbine era of heightened fear over student safety. [...] By the time Richman's weekly class was set to reconvene, the university's director of security had called in the San Francisco Police Department's homicide division. [...] Kaufman said one of his students had recently been asked to leave the school when she submitted a paper alluding to suicide threats. Like Richman, the instructor approached his superiors for advice on possible counseling services, only to see the student swiftly expelled.
"They asked me if I plan to use my book 'Outlaw Bible' in class, because there are dirty poems in the book," he said. "The move is toward repression."
Reportedly, the university has also responded to this "crisis" -- entirely of the university administration's making -- by announcing stringent content guidelines for student work in all media. Author Daniel Handler was forcibly prevented from entering the university's buildings to present at a forum regarding the professor's dismissal. (I should think the university would have actively been doing all it could to prevent anyone from presenting or attending at that forum, indeed, considering as it could not have hoped to fare well.)
It will be fascinating to watch the Academy try to fit their new censorship -- of people who are not only paying for the privilege, but almost all of whom are legal adults -- into what they will be pleased to call their principles of artistic expression document. This is also the sort of thing that's likely to affect both faculty and student recruitment, at least in the near term. After all, it's likely that the ability to create freely will be one of the things that attracts both students and faculty to a university, and the fact that the university is now on record with behavior that says, in essence, "Well, no, you can't create freely; you can only do what we approve," will perhaps create some problems in the future.
One can but hope, in any event.
Posted by iain at April 05, 2004 03:36 PM
