Fear The MOOC!

Perhaps yet another reason professors, especially humanities profs, fear the MOOC. Was it just coincidence that a very mild crack about professors and their impressionable students got me banned from Jonathan Rees's blog?

Colleen Flaherty has a story in Slate: Wanted: Adoring Female Students

Some excerpts:

The intellectual and physical seduction of young female students by older, male professors—usually in the humanities, and in the throes of midlife crises—is so common in movies and books that it’s become a cliché.

And her excerpts from a twitter thread:

@hallleloujah: “had one who called everything sexy in a weirdly drawn out, British way. Also started a rumor he was undercover for CIA (he wasn't).”

@kitalita: “one kept conveniently ‘forgetting’ my graded assignments in his office and specifically told me he was divorced (he wasn't).”

@AmyRosary: “Let's talk about the English department chair I got fired for harassing EACH AND EVERY female English major. He liked to insist [continued in a separate tweet] upon meeting girls in his office and serenading them with Bob Dylan covers with the door closed, or ‘accidentally’ putting on porn.”

@kellieherson: “Providing a validation space for those men is the only reason university administrators allow the humanities to continue to exist.”

Another follower cited a proclivity for flirting among her theater professors, one of whom bragged about once trying to meet women with actor Pat Morita. One said her professor had emailed her to tell her that not doing her homework was “not sexy”; yet another fended off a request for her to model for a professor who said he was an amateur photographer.

While conversing with a business acquaintance I found out that she, as an 18 year old theatre major, had taken a class from my favorite theatre prof (ouch!), and that he had explained to her that if she wanted to be an actress, she would have to "get used to" being naked on stage. She found another major.

Chapter one zillion, Men, Women, and Power.