On the last day of his human sexuality class, University of Kansas social welfare professor Dennis Dailey apologized to his students for the negative publicity the course has been receiving since state senator Susan Wagle commenced her campaign against the course, against Dailey, and against all similar state-funded courses. According to AP coverage, Dailey told his students that "It is unfortunate that your opportunities for learning may have in some way been fouled by this experience." Dailey went on to spend the class session discussing how young people can know when they are ready have sex; showing "Marsha and Harry," a video in which hand puppets of male and female genitalia act out their first sexual encounter; and reading aloud Dr. Seuss' Oh, The Places You'll Go.

That night, The O'Reilly Factor devoted another segment to Dailey. This one featured an anonymous silhouette of a woman--"Jennifer"--who claimed to have taken a class on incest from Dailey and who claimed that Dailey used that class to promote pedophilia and incest. In particular, she alleged that Dailey told his students he was sexually aroused by hugging his daughters. Dailey denies the allegations and says he doubts the accuser took the course as she claims to have done. He also notes that if he really had said the things she accused him of saying, she would not be the only student speaking out against him.

Two things:

First, Dailey's course, while required for some undergraduate majors, does sound like it tends to confuse group therapy with academic pursuits. A telling sentence from the AP report: "He discouraged students from having sex if, among other reasons, 'either party felt objectified' or feared 'feeling guilty when it's over.'" That's counseling, not teaching. Though I have defended Dailey's academic freedom on this blog and will continue to do so, I continue to wonder about the academic value of his course.

Second, Susan Wagle's smear campaign against Dailey is looking worse with every new allegation. She has yet to watch the videos that were the original focus of her claim that Dailey was showing porn to his students, she continues to make unsubstantiated, terribly damaging, and quite possibly libelous allegations about Dailey's character, and she cannot produce credible witnesses to the crimes she alleges Dailey committed in front of thousands of students over the years. The only people she has been able to enlist in her cause are her student-intern (whose stories about Dailey's classroom conduct have not been confirmed by other students in the course and who has a palpable conflict of interest) and this anonymous and highly unbelievable Jennifer figure.

KU will be responding to Wagle's complaint against Dailey this week. I'll post more as it becomes available.

UPDATE: Though the papers initially reported that Dailey's class was required for some majors (they were quoting KU students, if I recall), that turns out not to be correct. Human Sexuality in Everyday Life is an elective course.

Picking up on some of what Erin says here, I've been pretty sure from the start that this course is therapeutic blather more than scientific or even sociological content. And it's possible that, like a lot of preachers, this professor has gotten bolder and more dogmatic as he's gotten older. But I don't think the department he's part of understands the difference between group therapy and education, and they're hardly alone. As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, vast and powerful schools of education in this country are similarly clueless. ...Not to mention much in the way of English composition programs, Women's Studies, Peace Studies, etc., etc.

You might argue that it's ultimately a good thing when a probably bogus course like this one, representative of so many others, pops up -- that it shines a light on the much larger problem of the value of many of the courses American college students are taking. But I'd say that the Dailey story is an example of exactly how NOT to shine light on valueless college courses, because now it's all mixed up with this witch hunt business. Believe me, even if other students of Dailey's over the years recall shocking or questionable stuff, they're unlikely to come forward, because Americans don't like witch hunts.

Affirmative action (or, as I prefer to call it, the quota system) dictated this result. The quota system inevitably led to the broadening of our sense of entitlement to include a college education. Blacks couldn't be left out, and had to be represented at the most elite institutions. Feminists insisted on proportional representation in all human endeavors, except when it didn't suit their purposes. The solution we discovered was to extend the right to a college education to everybody, thus devaluing that education to something akin to a high school education in 1950.

The struggle over the Dailey class had to happen. If adolescence is now extended into the mid-20s and everybody has the right to go to college, then college takes on the burdens of high school as well... everything from remedial courses and psychotherapy to a revival of in loco parentis. Dailey has taken on a role that doesn't seem to belong in a traditional college classroom, somewhere between a guidance counselor and a morals cop with feminist leanings. If the kids in college are just adolescents who must be protected from their own decisions at all costs (as feminists have so eloquently argued), then the state representative is going to see this as a morals issue, just like the high school PTA. Parents began sending their daughters to the university in mass. Both the feminists and the evangelicals agree on this one. Better create an absolutely safe and sanitized environment for the girls or we'll tan your hide.

Can't have your cake and eat it too.

"Though I have defended Dailey's academic freedom on this blog and will continue to do so, I continue to wonder about the academic value of his course."

Erin, I think your remark here crystallizes my unease over this matter and perhaps explains my reluctance to post n this matter.

It is a classic scenario:

A professor teaches a course of questionable value. The course is attacked but the person leading the attack gives me the willies.

[if anyone can educate me as to the origin of 'willies' I would be greatgful].

What do you do? There is an initial aversion on my part to take the side, or be seen as taking the side, of someone like Wagle. I do no wish to be tarred with the brush of prudery or be alligned with shock and awe political thunderstorms designed to make Wagle's bones as a state political leader. On the other hand - - - and I admit I have no first hand knowledge of the curricula except for news reports - - - the details lead me to believe that the course borders on sex-ed alchemy. (Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . :-)

This is not a dilemma limited to the academic sphere. Was not Bill Clinton's presidency spared because many, many people had a greater aversion to the motives and beliefs of his most visceral opponents than to the acts which ignited the firestorm? [A simplification to be sure - and I am sure no one would like to see 93 posts on the Clinton presidency!!!!!]

Not a good idea to spark a Clinton debate. But there are elements of correspondence. (Now, remember please that this writer voted, much to my chagrin, for Clinton twice.)

The Clintons and their followers were the evangelists for the sexual abuse, domestic violence, and violence against women crusades. The Clintons had no problem with destroying the careers or imprisoning men who offended, until Bill Clinton himself was the offender. The insistence that the anger at Clinton was a moral reaction against him getting laid is disingenous. Some people were morally offended, that is true, but that was not the sum total of the outrage at his actions. The CEO of my firm would be summarily fired for behaving in his office as Clinton did.

There is a strange polarity at work here. An almost paranoid obsesssion with safety and security accompanied the emergence of young women into the public sphere in the 70s and 80s. The puritanical response could have been expected and it came from both sides. The feminist version of a moral crusade came disguised as the violence against women hysteria. In practice, this moral crusade turned out to be no different that the traditional view of evangelicals.

Both sides in the KU controversy are continuing down the same path. You'll notice that both sides are defending the young women from horrors worse than death -- each side just has a different way of stating it. For the lefty prof, the danger is "oppression" and hurt feelings. For the religious state rep, the danger is an affront to morality. Both are concerned with the same problem.

I agree that a core problem is the sort of hypersecurity that is making America an extended gated community. (Michael Moore's film, Bowling for Columbine, for all of its obvious faults, brought out this paranoia nicely.) Since true education consists in "casting a cold eye" on the world ("dissecting" it, to allude to another discussion on this list), a certain toughness is called for. The moment you begin describing the world as overwhelming, and everyone in it as vulnerable, you bring in the protection-from-reality troops of the right and of the left.

But keep in mind that it could be worse. I live in France, where Muslim girls gather in rallies, all of them wearing t-shirts that say I LOVE MY VEIL.

Another analogy would be to McCarthyism. Much recearch in the 90's has revealed that McCarthy was indeed right when he stated in his 1950 Wheeling speech that communists had infiltrated the highest levels of the Rosevelt and Truman administrations and did much harm. But because of his dubious tactics, McCarthy's central point was ignored and everyone concentrated on the "witch hunt" aspect. Now we find oursevles in a similar boat. It is clear that the critical issue here is amount of "therapeutic blather" in the college classrooms of the nation. The Dailey crisis at KU is just a single manifestation. But we seem reluctant to take it on for fear of being labled "Wagleite witch hunters", so the blather goes on and the public continues to fund professors who teach courses of dubious academic merit.

I don't see much comparison here, Charles. McCarthy's original concern and his later witch-hunt activities were both centered on his (maybe justified) belief that communists were a threat to national security. The original issue with Dailey was that he was using his classroom to promote pedophilia and so forth. Your point about the course having dubious academic merit is probably a sound one, but it's very distinct from the original issue and it shouldn't suffer from witch-hunt status due to Wagle's actions.

Now that IPO isn't here to have the vapors, I'd like to invoke C.S. Lewis again. I don't have it in front of me, but somewhere I remember reading a discussion of witch hunts in which he said that the reason we don't hunt witches anymore is that we don't believe in them (that is, the medieval idea of witches.) If we honestly believed that when a child sickens and dies it's because a neighbor is in league with the devil and has cast a spell, we'd crank up the witch hunts again.

The original issue with Dailey was that he was using his classroom to promote pedophilia and so forth."

I think you are mistaken. The orginal issue, at least as reported here in Wichita, was that Dailey was using "obscene" materials in his class and had made denigrating remarks to some women in the class. The pedophilia accusation surfaced only after the first O'Reilly show.

I found it interesting the on the "no spin" zone O'Reilly led this story with a story about a child molestation ring in Ohio and called the Daily story "Prof or Perv." Certainly no spin there.

Whatever, but it still wasn't about whether the class had academic merit.

Between Dailey's class and the sexfests, I guess future generations of Americans will be born only to people who went to college. No one else will know how to procreate.

Au contraire, Laura - college students will have been so turned off by the mechanization of sex that, even though they know how, they will refuse to procreate. Maintenance of the Earth's human population will be the responsibility the happy neanderthals who never needed instruction.

The ballet "Giselle" is the source of "the willies" - Giselle encounters the figures - the willies while in the forest.