Last week, Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius vetoed a budget amendment that would have cut state funding to all academic departments where sexually explicit material is used in the classroom. The amendment was the brainchild of state senator Susan Wagle, and was conceived with the express purpose of putting a stop to a University of Kansas human sexuality course that has been taught by social welfare professor Dennis Dailey for the better part of two decades. Governor Sibelius cited the sanctity of academic freedom in her explanation for the veto--but this has not stopped Senator Wagle, who is scheduled to appear on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor tonight.

Wagle will be joined by Jessica Zahn, the hitherto anonymous student who served as her informant. Zahn is a graduating senior who just happens to be interning for Wagle this semester. Wagle plans to use some of her air time to play tapes of Dailey teaching his class. She says they demonstrate not only the inappropriate nature of Dailey's pedagogy, but also show that he "continued to engage in sexually harassing behavior and talked about pedophilia in a socially unacceptable manner." There has been much back and forth in the comments on Critical Mass about whether a course such as Dailey's has any business being taught in a university setting (some say it is obscene, others that it has no academic value). A look at Wagle and Zahn in action, and a listen to Dailey's lecture patter, may help to clarify the exact nature of the problem out in Kansas. O'Reilly will be a friendly host and it doesn't sound like there will be guests present to offer an alternative perspective on Dailey's course--but that, too, could be very revealing in itself.

UPDATE, 4/30/03: The Lawrence Journal-World reports on the reactions of KU students to last night's broadcast. The ill-prepared O'Reilly drew laughter when he twice referred to Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius as "he." Wagle's allegations drew more outraged responses: "It was all about slandering Dennis Dailey," said one senior. Dailey's supporters are planning to travel to the Capitol today to hand out fliers. Meanwhile, Susan Wagle has stepped up her efforts to pillory Dailey and to locate other courses like his: according to the above-cited article, she recently "sent KU officials an open records request for information about Dailey's background and qualifications. A copy of the request obtained by the Journal-World shows she also asks for information about the class curriculum and for KU to provide copies or access to all slides, videos and films shown in the class and their costs."

I'm a little skeptical on this. It's probably best to suspend judgment on it for the moment. The reason I'm not throwing myself into anybody's court is that my wife has served as a teaching assistant for a course on "Human Sexuality" for the last two semesters and, like everything involving sex, the results have been really mixed. Even she has reservations, and she's certainly no prude.

The problem really revolves around the scholarly content of the course, and at times I'm forced to question exactly what is supposed to be accomplished by this course. My only honest conclusion is that it serves as a kind of wish-list in action for sex ed advocates. Everything they can't get away with in dealing with grade-schoolers is cranked up in these courses, which offer practically no academic challenge at all.

The opening day is simply a Clockwork-Orange-like shock treatment in one sexually explicit image after the next. In fact, this sudden-immersion style of predagogy is revisited over and over throughout the course, and all the assignments focus on getting the students to spill out every last detail of their sexual "selves" onto the page for total strangers. S&M practitioners give little presentations which amount to canvassing the latest crop of young meat for recruitment, and all the local sex shops get to hawk their wares.

At some point one has to ask whether this is actually a rigorous college course crafted to intellectually challenge and stimulate the students, or a deliberate attempt to shatter every last vestige of taboo, simply because someone has decided that it's time these kids loosen up and get with it.

Since the Kinsey Institute is here, I have extra reason for pause. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to nail down a reason to actually intrude into the classroom, and I'm always one to err on the side of liberty. I find the methods questionable and certainly the motives are as well, but academics have the ultimate Spade, which is to ask "Who are you to determine what is valid academic content and what isn't? You're a mere layman." In a way, that's a valid retort, but in another way it strikes me as a real cop-out.

I too am a bit of a skeptic on this.

Erin, we need your help here. Might I suggest a streaming video feed. . . .

I too am a bit of a skeptic on this.

Erin, we need your help here. Might I suggest a streaming video feed. . . .

Who Runs the Asylum?

There is a more fundamental questions here: Who determines the curiculum of a university? The folks who own it and pay the bills? Or any professor who goes off on a strange tangent?

Nobody is saying that this professor can not rent a hall and teach whatever he likes. The question is, "Who should pay for it?" The taxpayers and their university, or should the professor forced to become an entreprenur?

AB, I see where you're going with that, and I do sympathize. Unfortunately, the people who pay for the things being taught in colleges are, by and large, unqualified to make that determination. If they were, they wouldn't need to pay the university in the first place. See what I mean?

As I said in an earlier post on this issue, this course is going to be tough for the university to defend, leaving aside the "shock and ugh" problem.

Actually, it's a typical mess--the only unusual thing is that someone finally decided to complain about it.

I think the underlying cause here as in most of the other problems is competing exclusionaries: professors who believe they are the sole power with regard to what should be taught--and what should be thought and students who believe they are the sole power to determine teaching effectiveness or relevance.

Both groups have thus far demonstrated a sort of magnificent contempt for anything that might be considered "higher education."

In other words, all of these issues--crazed professors trying to brainwash their students, daffy administrators who want them socially promoted,whacky faculty groups who pass motions protesting gravity as racist--go back to the same root cause: freedom without responsibility to the community at large.

Not surprisingly, the community is getting increasingly restive. They may not know how to put together a curriculum, but they're beginning to notice that there isn't one. And they're right.

By the way, it's the academy itself which has been steadily chipping away at the concept of academic freedom in recent years--witness the cocnept of "hate speech." So it's going to be difficult to turn around and start claiming it's an absolute. Not that it won't happen.

Look for that, a lot of slippery slope arguments, and many jibes being hurled at the yokels of Kansas and at the peasantry in general.

Sage, I've found your comments on this question fascinating and smart. But there's a relativism running through your remarks (who am I - who is anyone outside of a faculty expert - to question a college or university curriculum?) with which I have to take issue. I've been inside university curriculum debates and policies for years, and I've studied the matter with some care as well. Be assured that in fields like the humanities and social sciences, university faculty are often as clueless, ideologically-driven, unimaginative, or simply self-interested (they want courses whose content happens to reflect their current interests, for example; or they want to maintain courses they've taught for decades and don't need to prep for) as anyone else might be. A responsible parent owes it to herself to, at the very least, compare for instance the curricula at Brown and at St. John's College Annapolis as her child is mulling over where to go to school. One of the reasons Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind made such a splash was that he revealed the utter curricular disarray of most American colleges and universities. Far from deferring to faculty on these matters, parents shelling out tens of thousands of dollars should take an active interest in, say, whether they are paying for English professors to turn on tvs and have students watch three episodes of Seinfeld.

The issue in the KU case is not offensive content so much as quality; and if, as I suspect, this course turns out to be as lame as many university courses in the social sciences turn out to be, THAT should be a matter of discussion. Obviously no political bodies should be involved in this matter at all, and the state senator will make herself as ridiculous as the US Representatives who've tried firing the Mogadishu guy made themselves. The story has, though, found its proper level: it will allow O'Reilly to appeal to the prurience of his audience under the cover of moral concern.

The Legislature's Duty

Sage,

Students are certainly in no position to set the curiculum. For a public university the legislature is. Education is not the only difficult issue the legislature faces and it is their duty to correct any institution under their control which has gone off the deep end.

If I may make an analogy. One of the key elements underlying our republic and its constitution is that we shall have civilian oversight of the military. Most civilians are not experts in military matters, but in times of crisis civilian oversight is critical to our approach to that crisis. I might say the same about education. I may not be an expert in course development, but I know a pointless course when I see one. And since I'm paying the bills I at least should require teachers to hold to some sort of adult responsibility.

In response to your update about the O'Reilly broadcast and other developments: Nice to see this playing out according to the established script. The rest of the story will look something like this: Wagle's new-found fame goes right to her head. She goes nuts sniffing out degeneracy from coast to coast and becomes a national laughingstock. Jay Leno fashions crude puns out of her last name. A popular new brand of condoms are called Wagles. Defeated, Wagle agrees to be interviewed by Diane Sawyer. Wagle tells Diane she's "actually a really fun person...I'm not this puritanical granny I've been made out to be." Sawyer surprises Wagle by bringing out Professor Dailey and asking Wagle if she'd "like to apologize." "Yes, Diane, I would!" Wagle and Dailey embrace, step back from their embrace, gaze at each other for a moment, and passionately kiss.