CRYING WOLF: A Former Professor's Lawsuit Cheapens Discrimination At Dartmouth

When it comes to racial and gender-based issues, Dartmouth has had more than its fair share in the four years I’ve been on campus. Blowups which come to mind include the Native American incidents exacerbated by the ultraconservative Dartmouth Review, protests regarding illegal immigration, the bashing of Asian students for supposedly lowering the GPA of the school, and the voluntary ignorance of the many incidents of rape and sexual assault on the part of the Dartmouth administration - to the extent that the former head of sexual assault up and quit in frustration. All of these are worrisome occurrences of discrimination that deserve to be addressed by Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff. However, out of all these issues, it is the most recent incident - the threat of a lawsuit by former writing professor Priya Venkatsen, 39, for racial and gender discrimination which has generated the most media buzz and has proposed actual legal action. Unfortunately, because the incident is completely baseless and ultimately an inane attempt to promote Venkatsen’s own publications, the professor’s complaint has only succeeded in degrading the value of legitimate complaints of racial and gender discrimination filed by Dartmouth women and minorities.

Priya Venkatsen quit her teaching and research position at Dartmouth in March after a brief stint at the college, but not before e-mailing several freshman students in her winter term writing class threatening to sue them for being disrespectful to her in class - an attitude which she attributes to her gender (female) and her ethnicity (Indian). Venkatsen's complaints included her irritation with students who questioned her ideas and interpretation of assigned classroom texts. Although none of the students’ comments ever mentioned her race or gender and instead focused on the reading material, Venkatsen believes the students’ questioning was an attempt to undermine her authority.

First of all, as an English writing student and former Dartmouth teaching assistant for the same type of class (freshmen writing) which Venkatsen taught, I am shocked that this kind of behavior by students would be deemed unacceptable. Humanities professors have traditionally been less of authority figures in their classrooms than debate moderators;, and it the job of humanities students to have different interpretations of texts and question the opinions of both their peers and their professors. Freshmen often have to be encouraged to contradict a professor’s views, as they are often overly concerned with approval and grades. As my writing professor at Dartmouth, Gary Lenhart, often told our students, “Writing is easy. It’s thinking that’s hard.”

However, apparently this is not how things worked in Venkatsen's classroom, much to the confusion and ultimate frustration of students whooften disagreed with Venkatsen's opinions and felt that they weren't allowed to express their own ideas. Things came to a breaking point when one student spoke out in a lengthy explanation of his point-of-view on the text and made an argument as to why he disagreed with the professor's interpretation. When he was finished, the class applauded in appreciation of the student’s courage to stand up to, what the class felt, was the professor's intolerance of their opinions. Venkatsen, however, was so "horrified" by the class’ reaction to the student’s tirade that she reprimanded the students and canceled the next several meetings of the class. Her distress ultimately led her to quit her job, but not before sending several e-mails to students threatening to both take legal action against them and publish a book on her experience in which the individual students would be named. The freshmen were “shocked” and “upset” by the e-mail, though official Dartmouth legal council has met with the students involved and has called the professor’s claims "baseless." “Imagine you're an 18 year old away from home and your professor is threatening to sue you," the lawyer commented. “No wonder the students are upset.” For, what would seem, simply participating in a valid academic argument. Venkatsen’s intention to profit on the controversy by writing a book only further discredits her motivations.

To further weaken her argument, Venkatsen complains that when she reported her students behavior to Thomas Corman, the director of Dartmouth's Institute for Writing and Venkatsen's boss, her concerns were ignored and Corman "made comments himself which caused discomfort." Venkatsen reported that Corman related a story to her about a class he taught where students discussed racism in baseball. "It made me very uncomfortable," Venkatsen states. "Why would he be saying 'racism in baseball?' He is intimating that my being a fan of baseball is inappropriate. By saying that, what he really means is, 'don't you know that people like you would never be let into baseball because of your
ethnicity?'"

Excuse the capitals, but, WHAT!? Wasn't Cormen simply trying to relate to an upset woman by giving her an example of the time he taught a class which became racially charged?

That's how Cormen saw it.

"I taught a first year course on baseball,” Cormen explains, confused. “Some of the students wrote papers on racism in baseball. Why that offended her is beyond me." Unfortunately, Venkatsen is clearly someone who thinks the world is out to get her a priori of anything actually happening. As such, she has kept everyone around her wound so tight they can't express any kind of opinion on anything. No wonder her students felt so frustrated. Plus, if she manages to take such obviously-intended interactions with peers and students and interpret them so wildly, I can only imagine how she twisted the meanings of classroom texts. It is easy to understand, in that case, why students would disagree with her interpretations and vocalize them, causing Venkatsen to skew their protests in an even wilder direction, and interpret them as racial discrimination.

However, the real travesty of this case is that it sheds a poor light on true cases of discrimination. It is cases like these which promote the “Nazi feminist” and “PC sensitive” stereotypes which cause people to roll their eyes and ignore legitimate complaints of women and minorities being mistreated. In addition, Venkatsen has helped sow the seeds of discrimination in her students by giving them a reason to mistrust female and Indian authority figures. I know if some teacher wrote a book slandering me because of an opinion I expressed in class about a piece of literature, I would have a hard time not letting that affect my personal bias against said teacher, and, by extension, those who reminded me of her. Let’s hope we can leave our assumptions behind along with Ms. Venkatsen’s resume.


A real incident of racism: The Dartmouth Review, circa 2006.