It's grossly irresponsible for a professor to abandon a class mid-semester. It doesn't make any sense at all. Students are free to complain to anyone they want to. When professors critical of Israel are denounced and far worse retaliation is demanded, no one suggests that these professors are entitled to leave their classes. Diskin will probably be permanently blackballed from academia, and she should be. No one can trust her to finish a class.

Sure it's irresponsible. And sure students have a right to complain. That doesn't make the one less understandable, or the other more constructive. There is also a difference between students grousing and initiating formal sanction-oriented review. Obviously the admins have a role to play in the last ... but then I noted that in my post.

It may be that Diskin gets blackballed -- but again, she was apparently responding to the fact that she felt she already had been on a local level. As a champion of academic freedom, you should be able to see why she might have felt that her ability to teach was compromised beyond repair.

My real interest here lies in students' obligations toward their own learning. They are not consumers, always entitled to be pleased by the teacher's product. They are not victims, always entitled to get disciplinary satisfaction when they are offended. But campus culture positions them as both. This wreaks havoc with learning.

Teachers have plenty of obligations to students, and I write about that ad nauseum. But students also have obligations to teachers -- or they do if they want their coursework to be something other than a pitiful exercise in mutual suspicion and manipulative gamesmanship.

"you go to the teacher first, and you escalate only if you get nowhere"...I think it takes a little more courage to complain TO someone than to complain ABOUT someone.

Students who develop this habit will find that it does not serve them well in outside life. If you make a habit of immediately going to your boss's superior (or to HR) every time you disagree with something he has done, your career is not likely to be a very successful one.

Meanwhile, administrators who encourage and continue the "behind-the-back" process of complaint and eventual investigation--seemingly with great willingness to do unto colleagues what they would find immensely damaging if it were done unto them--just help it all along.

Amen. The first words out of the mouth of any faculty member or administrator faced with such a complaint should be: "And what did Professor Diskin say when you brought this matter to her attention?"

And when the answer was: "Well, we haven't talked to Professor Diskin about it," the administrator should have said: "Let's presume the best of Professor Diskin. Go talk to her first. And after you've done that, come back if you still have a big problem."

What's really ugly about this is the presumption by the powers that be that the teacher, in this case Diskin, is driven by bad motives.

In effect, on the basis of a complaint filed by a few students who hadn't bothered to give Diskin a chance to explain herself, Diskin was presumed guilty and forced into the untenable situation of trying to prove her innocence.

It's hard know who's more manipulative and destructive here: the complainants or those in authority who listened -- at best uncritically, and at worst with deliberate malice in their own hearts -- and acted to discredit the Diskin.

In Diskin's position, I'd have been out of there too. For those who aren't so mobile, this episode should chill them to the bone and cause them to be very, very cautious of what they do and say.

John K. Wilson wrote:

It's grossly irresponsible for a professor to abandon a class mid-semester.

It's grossly irresponsible for an administration to abandon a faculty member at any time, especially mid-semester, on the basis of an accusation by students who have chosen not to take their complaints to that faculty member first.

It doesn't make any sense at all.

The hell you say.

The professor was faced with a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea: continue working for an unscrupulous, unprofessional administration which had already undermined her credibility and which could easily damage her further, or get the hell out of Dodge and risk being demonized as a quitter (as you have chosen to do).

Students are free to complain to anyone they want to.

True -- but so what? The school had an obligation to assume good faith on the part of Diskin, and should have required the students to take their complaints to her first.

When professors critical of Israel are denounced and far worse retaliation is demanded, no one suggests that these professors are entitled to leave their classes.

Red herring. The issue is proper procedure, not the nature of the offense.

The proper response of a "higher up" to a complaint that skipped the professor in charge is the same, irrespective of politics. The "higher up" should refer students to the professor who they feel offended by, irrespective of political stance. Period.

Diskin will probably be permanently blackballed from academia, and she should be.

I hope not, because she should not be, but I agree she probably will be.

No one can trust her to finish a class.

And the faculty can't trust the Brandeis power structure to give them an opportunity to resolve differences with students before the hammer of Thor comes down on them.

How chilling is that?

I'm curious how you reconcile this critique (which I largely agree with) and your general willingness to trust and make expansive claims about similar reports by students about expressions of "political bias" in classrooms--not to mention urging that there be stronger administrative mechanisms for students to report such incidents to. If it's a mistake to simply trust claims by students about what was said in a class or said by a professor in a "teaching moment", then it's consistently a mistake. If it's a mistake for students to complain first to an administrator (or to outside organizations) then it's consistently a mistake.

What is interesting is that the approach here seems to miss that students often feel a genuine risk of retaliation.

The risk of retaliation does exist, but too many voices have amplified this fear way out of proportion. Students should at least trust their professors to be somewhat reasonable. If it bothers them to hear a one-sided arguement about an issue, they can at least ask why the other side isn't discussed. If the teacher is abrupt and dismissive, then the students can find some outside help. This professor probably didn't know she came off as biased. Any student has to allow this possibility before making a complaint.

More importantly, only if the personal opinion that was so sinfully vented somehow compromised the quality of the lesson can someone say something. It should be obvious (but it doesn't seem to be in this case) that you listen to a professor to learn, not to hear your opinions accepted and echoed. A student should only complain about a teacher who doesn't teach, not one that has a different point of view.

Hi Erin: I have to disagree with you on this one. I've now read many sources (newspapers, blogs) on the Diskin story, and I'm convinced that students did in fact respectfully challenge this woman in class repeatedly, not only about her rigidly pro-Israel point of view, but about one of two assigned texts for the course - a book its own editor calls "counter-propaganda" (he's quoted in the Washington Jewish Week article about this).

http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=8016&TM=39474.45

I teach at GW, and I'm proud of the way students first took issue directly, in class, with someone clearly unable to teach dispassionately (or even in an informed way, since Diskin has no expertise in the subject), and then went to the chair of the department.

The guy at fault here has got to be the chair of GW's political science dept., I'm afraid -- a person so far unwilling to talk to the press about a scandalous situation, and I presume the person who decided that an unqualified spouse of another visiting professor, a woman who assigned as a primary text in her course a work of propaganda written by the person who funded her GW position, would be an appropriate instructor for our students.

This isn't a story about the proper protocol for student complaints; nor is it a story about people with non-standard views being hounded out of academia. It is a rather inspiring story about students understanding rank propaganda when they see it, and having the guts to do something about it. It is also a story about cynicism and indifference in academic hiring.

Hi Margaret -- Thanks for this. The story does seem to have evolved since the early reports and since I first wrote about it. Still, even if in this instance the students behaved admirably, approaching the professor before complaining higher up, the pattern I describe in the post is alive and well, and doing active damage in schools across the country (Brandeis being the Case du Jour). I agree with you about the chair--and I do still think this case raises important issues about protocol on a number of levels. Whether the issue is students crying wolf in order to get a professor punished (as in the case at Brandeis), or students calling a professor on biased and unprofessional teaching, the larger problem remains: ideology is corrupting academe, and the administrators are actively helping it along. At Brandeis, admins eagerly launched a witch hunt against a longtime professor because students alleged that he was insensitive toward Hispanics; at GWU, admins hired someone nepotistically and conveniently, ignoring signs that this individual might be more interested in proselytizing than teaching fairly. Both cases reek of unconscionable carelessness and--to borrow your term--cynicism, not only about academic hiring, but about academic freedom, due process, and fair procedure in general.

Kudos to the students who spoke up, though.

I am in this class and was one of the kids who spoke out. I've been following the blogs written about this issue and I feel everyone here should read this as well:

http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-can-be-learned-from-hannah-diskin.html

As for this blog, this was not destroying a teacher. This was standing up and speaking out about an unprofessional and biased instructor, who we now know is unqualified and should not have been hired.