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June 29, 2003
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More on Bonnell
Media organizations seem reluctant to take up the story of John Bonnell, the Macomb Community College English professor who was recently suspended without pay for allegedly using harassing language in the classroom and for including unnecessary sexual content in his courses. Here's an exception, a story from Click on Detroit that reports the devastating fact that when all the hype and horror are peeled away, Bonnell was essentially suspended for teaching James Joyce.
Bonnell has been suspended by administrators at Macomb five separate times now, always for more or less the same reason. The latest suspension is the result of a complaint filed by a student (unnamed in the article, of course) who took offense after a class discussion of Joyce's short story, "The Boarding House":
A passage from "The Boarding House" reads: "She knew he had a good screw for one thing and she suspected he had a bit of stuff put by."Bonnell explained to his class that Joyce, in the interpretive sense, was saying a "good screw" is a reference to the sexual function between a young woman in the story and a 35-year-old man.
Bonnell has protested his suspension by carrying signs around campus that say, "Loose Quips Sink Professorships," "Censors Don't Tread on Me," and a sign with a picture of an American flag covered with footprints.
"A relentless witch hunt has been in progress where the school has been trying with all of its might to silence me or get rid of me," Bonnell said.
If this report is accurate--and from what I have seen of the documentation surrounding Bonnell's case it is--Bonnell is being punished not for behaving inappropriately in the classroom, but for doing his job. English teachers are supposed to assign great works of literature to their students. And they are supposed to use class time to make sure that students grasp that literature. That means ensuring that students understand the author's colloquial expressions and use of innuendo. With a writer like Joyce, devoting some class time to basic comprehension issues is crucial: the usages of early twentieth-century Dublin are hardly those of early twenty-first century America, and to follow Joyce's meaning, an inexperienced reader often needs a bit of guidance. Joyce, moreover, was notorious for taking his subject matter beyond the comfort level of his editors and his public. He squabbled endlessly with squeamish publishers over word choice (Joyce's use of the word "bloody" was considered to be particularly racy). And though it is now considered to be a masterpiece, Ulysses was originally banned for obscenity in England and the U.S. To teach Joyce well, one must help students understand why and how putatively "obscene" or perverse material was important to Joyce's artistic vision.
Bonnell is in the painfully awkward position of being unable to publicize the precise details of his case for fear of further retaliation. His is a situation that both forces him to compromise his own credibility (the public reasonably expects that people with nothing to hide would not suppress vitally relevant information) and compels him to protect his accusers (whose names and rationales remain safely concealed). Bonnell is 64, and can't very well redirect his career by moving to another university. He needs the help of an organization like the ACLU or FIRE, either of which could provide the legal support and the access to publicity he requires.
UPDATE: Though the specifics of the present complaint and suspension are not publicly available, there is a very thorough online archive chronicling Bonnell's past clashes with the Macomb Community College administration. It includes the texts of complaints that have been registered against Bonnell by a parent and by a student, along with his correspondence with the MCC administration about them. It includes the details of his various suspensions and supplies documents from the lawsuit Bonnell filed against MCC in 1999 (among them is an amicus brief from FIRE). Finally, the page includes many testimonials from Bonnell's students--none of whom deny that he uses explicit language in class, but all of whom stress that his use of that language is germane to the course content and that Bonnell himself is one of the most qualified and respectful teachers they have ever had. Well worth a look.
Thanks to Jack W. for the link.
