This is one of the rare things about which Erin, Stanley Fish, and I all agree. Academics need to learn to "save the world on their own time."

"Yes, it was simply a class, but they took a risk by helping someone they knew only through the media."

What risk did they take? The risk of getting a good grade in the class?

People who volunteer to go to Afghanistan take risks. People who live in Iran and protest against the Iranian government (and live in Iran) take risks. People who start businesses take risks. American college students doing what their professors want them to do are not taking risks.

It's possible that Troy Davis may be a worthy cause, but it devalues the word "risk" to apply it in this situation.

I failed to note any mention of trying to determine the facts of the case. Or is that sort of thing too old fashioned for a modern university training mercenary rhetoricians?

Reposted this at: www.campusreform.org/articles/crossing-the-line-in-the-classroom

To be fair, the second paragraph does discuss the facts of the case.

she turned her freshman comp class into an activist workshop.

But so what? American University is a private, Methodist-affiliated university. Its mission statement says that its "distinctive feature...is its capacity ... to turn ideas into action ... by emphasizing the arts and sciences, then connecting them to the issues of contemporary public affairs writ large, notably in the areas of government, communication, business, law, and international service." It seems to me that AU wants its instructors to save the world on company time.

It seems to me Puglisi's pedagogy aligns pretty well with AU's explicitly activist mission. It seems to me that not only is she on the side of the angels, she's also on the side of her own employer. In any event, if she's not that's for AU itself to determine, not for us here in the peanut gallery, and FWIW, in an email, Puglisi tells me she has received "nothing but complete support" from AU.

Doesn't a private institution have a right to teach its own students in accordance with its own mission? And if we happen not to like that mission, shouldn't we criticize the institution and its mission rather than the instructor who tries to implement that mission?

Of course, none of this is to say that Puglisi's Davis project is a good model for public institutions, whose mission necessarily differs from AU's.

Eveningsun,
This was a freshman composition class. And no, the mission statement wouldn't permit it because it doesn't say anying about students having to kowtow to their prof's political agendas.

Perhaps as an AU alum this is why I still thank God that my AP credits got me out of College Writing. That said, university mission statements, turning a freshman composition class at a private university into a tool of the teacher's agenda may be legal, but it's still deeply dishonest to the students, and deprives them of what they SHOULD be taught in such a course--namely how to write well, not what to think.

For what it's worth, a little googling suggests that despite the article-writer's misleading description of her "simple writing course," she was actually teaching a graduate-level class. I can't tell from the AU Web site which specific class it was or whether students pursuing a graduate degree in Public Communication are required to take it.

Jeff is right--it was not a freshman comp class. The class appears to have been COMM-644: Public Communication Writing, a graduate course whose description reads as follows:

Explores writing for strategic communication and the relationship among audience, message structure and medium. Develops practical skills in the preparation of news releases, pitch letters, brochure copy, speeches, web site materials, opinion pieces, broadcast applications, magazine features, and advertising copy.

Sounds like a course in PR--and a course just begging to be taught using a "project-centered" pedagogy. And again, given that we're talking about a private university, I see no problem with that project having a political slant. (What's so political about the Troy Davis project, anyway? As I understand it, the goal is not to get Davis released, merely to get him genuine due process. Are conservatives now against justice itself?)

David,
Please don't define this as a partisan discussion ("Are conservatives now against justice itself?"). That's just not useful, and it's baiting. And besides, I'm personally pretty sick of being equated with "conservatives." I'm me, okay? Just like you are you--I don't equate you with "liberals" and I also don't go on and on on this blog about "liberals" this and "liberals" that. FWIW, I fit far more readily into a libertarian framework than a conservative one. That would be why I am pro-choice, agnostic, and pro-legalized marijuana, to name a very few of my decidedly not conservative positions.

I thought it was worth clarifying that this was a graduate class and not a freshman writing course, but I still have serious doubts about this kind of thing. What if a student gets halfway through the semester and, having reviewed all the facts, comes to a different conclusion about the justness of the cause? What place is there for individual conscience in a course that assumes only one way of looking at things? I can easily see from the article what the fourteen students accomplished as activists, but it's not clear to me what specific skills or new body of knowledge they acquired as students. As someone who lives and works near A.U. and occasionally hires entry-level copywriters and editors for a small business, I find that omission telling.

Jeff, in the scenario you ask us to consider, perhaps the disaffected students could take their concerns to the instructor and work out some alternative way to complete the course--perhaps by serving as a loyal opposition or devil's advocate for the rest of the group. Maybe I have to go back and read a bit more carefully, but I don't remember reading anything in the article ruling such a solution out. I doubt that Puglisi is such an ogre as to refuse a request for some such accommodation, or so uncreative as to be unable to think of one.

Even if such an accommodation were not possible, the disaffected students could simply finish the project "under protest," as it were. (I assume that PR professionals, like lawyers, sometimes find themselves advancing causes with which they personally disagree.) At worst, it seems to me, such a student would be in the same position as a student at Liberty University who discovers mid-semester that he no longer believes in God--an unfortunate circumstance, no doubt, but I wouldn't use its possibility to argue against LU's right to a Christian-activist pedagogy.

Erin, I didn't mean to refer to you personally, and I apologize for suggesting otherwise. FWIW, I would think libertarianism would smile upon the idea of a private institution pursuing its own agenda and pushing the pedagogical envelope. The greater flexibility of private institutions makes them a good testing ground for new ideas; why lace them into the same straitjacket as public institutions?

I'm not sure your counter-example works, Eveningsun. American U., nominally Methodist, states on its Web site that the school "endorses the Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued jointly in 1940 by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges." Across town, Catholic University's faculty handbook also endorses a mainstream definition of academic freedom, making one famously glaring exception for its theologians.

Meanwhile, Liberty University's faculty application narrowly and explicitly defines "academic freedom" within the bounds of a Christian doctrinal statement, an explicitly Christian philosophy of education, and a code of Christian professional ethics.

It's worth thinking, as you have, about whether or not the mission statements of private schools really mean what they say, or whether most of them mean anything at all, but I doubt the folks at A.U. intended their rhetoric about "turning ideas into action" to indicate that they're more dogmatic about mission statements than Catholic is, or as far outside the educational mainstream as Liberty is.

Jeff, I wonder if you have a problem with all the graduate students in the sciences who are forced to work on projects they neither conceived nor planned. That is to say, a corporate donor gave money to a lab to accomplish something, the professor running the lab chooses his grad student helpers, and that's that. Sure, the student can say no, but they s/he's ostracized a professor in his/her field.

Personally, I think both situations are wrong. Because political advocacy is no different, in an academic setting, than corporate advocacy.

Luther,

Corporate advocacy? What you described was research, not advocacy.