On Sarkeesian

Been thinking about the whole Anita Sarkeesian thing again.  Anita Sarkeesian, in case you haven't been following, is a feminist media critic who writes and speaks about misogynistic tendencies in video game design and culture.  Video game culture--and I would argue computer sciences in general--are often pretty male-dominated and women-hostile, though I'm sure you could find some good exceptions to this rule.

Anyway, Sarkeesian was invited to speak about her work at Utah State University, and received some really troubling death threats from someone promising to shoot up the event.  So she canceled.  My friend and colleague wrote a good letter about why the threat and the cancellation were so troubling, which you can read about here.  But the gist is that allowing people to carry concealed weapons around on campus elevates the concern all of us--faculty, staff, speakers--feel when we are speaking thoughts that might be unpopular.

I used to work at a university where my work--which was sometimes critical of the fossil fuel industries that supported my (public) university--was also pretty unpopular.  For a long time, I watered down what I wanted to say and tempered how I taught and what I assigned because of this.  This was not the most courageous thing to do, but that's what I did, and so I'm very interested in cases in which particular policies or environments make it hard for us to speak truth to power.  I also worked mostly with men, and mostly with young men, and in fields where they dominated in more ways than one, so thinking about how feminism gets muted in these areas is also interesting to me.

The other thing I'm thinking about is how we manage dealing with difficult or controversial topics in our classrooms, and how we make ourselves and our students vulnerable when we do so.  Often that vulnerability is necessary for us to learn.  But we can screw up the opportunity to make vulnerability safe so easily.  The line between vulnerability and anger or rage can also be thin in practice, if not productively directed through self expression, and I think this is especially true for young men.

I didn't always know how to direct that vulnerability, or when to use it effectively for learning.  t was a total stress biscuit when I first started teaching.  I mean, I loved it.  I loved the performative aspect of it, the engagement with the students, the intellectual stimulation.  I felt alive in the classroom.  And I still do!  I spend a lot of time prepping for class, figuring out how to do things better, and wanting to meaningfully engage my students.

But early on:  stress biscuit.  And not just from teaching so many classes for so little pay, either.  But because I was always afraid I would make a fool out of myself in class and reveal my ignorance, or step over some sort of line.

I did both.

I think most good teachers do look foolish and step over the line, at some point or another, in their careers.  Because you don't get better if you don't take risks.  And if you take risks, you will fail sometimes.  Sometimes, and especially if you're teaching already risky or difficult topics having to do with power, say, or privilege, or our own culpability and responsibility in the making of the world, you have to approach that metaphorical "line" in order to model courage and failure for your students.

So you have times where you mess up and have to make things better.  You can also get better with experience.  You learn some practical lessons.  Like never to pretend you know something when you don't, while still maintaining credibility and leadership with your students.  You model how ignorance can make you vulnerable but also exquisitely open to growth.  That takes time, to do that right.

Also, it's tempting sometimes to show off in class.  This is my personality anyway, so you know.  I have to watch it.

Like the one time I had a student who every damn day showed up to my class and proceeded to fall asleep, and then I threw a piece of chalk at him one time to wake him up, out of frustration.  I think I thought that would be funny, and maybe it kind of was.  He woke up and grinned, was a good sport about it, and didn't sleep again in my class.  But I'd never do that now.  Maybe that kid was working night shifts, what do I know?  Just talk to the kid, give the kid the crap grade if you have to, but don't embarrass him in class.  You don't throw stuff at people.  You always err on the side of compassion until you have a reason not to.

I knew I went over the line with that one, and I was punished for a good long time with a recurring nightmare in which some faceless student was being belligerent in class and I lost my cool and ended up beaning him with a dozen chalkboard erasers, rapid-fire.  When all the erasers were gone, I stood there in front of the class, red-faced and panting, while the other students stared at me with horror.  I knew I lost them.  I knew I had lost.

I always woke up sweating from that one.  Luckily, I don't have it anymore.  Because I'm pretty rarely frazzled in class these days, and it takes a lot to make me mad. Because: compassion.  For me and them.

So what's my point here, with all this rambling.  My point is that if you really want to show up in the classroom, sometimes you have to show up big, and you can show up too big--personality-wise or conceptually--and then you may have to do work to mend those fences.

I also have a few stories of my own regarding students who couldn't manage their own emotions in class, either.  I gave a pop quiz one time--it wasn't even going to be graded, it was just a pre-test--and a student got so mad that I would dare do that without announcing it ahead of time that he yelled at me in front of the class and exploded out of the classroom's double doors.  I was shaking for a good long time after the class was over.

Another time, I was invited to be a guest speaker in a colleague's class, and I said yes as a courtesy and a favor, because that's what you do.  I said some critical things about the students' future industry,  supported by research, and I was booed out of the classroom by a bunch of hooligans in the back room who had never been told that what they were about to go out in the world and do might not be met with applause.  That happened.  I shook after that, too.  And then I did a real good postmortem about my tone and content and went back to the same class the next year and had a very successful experience.  But you can bet I didn't say exactly what I really meant, either.  They may have been able to hear me better, but I didn't really communicate what I wanted, either.

Another student, another class:  he hadn't handed in assignments for five weeks, so I emailed him to let him know he was failing the class and should consider dropping before the census date.  Kindly written, a courtesy.  He then showed up in class and spewed invective at me, because how dare I think I could grade him poorly on a topic that even a kindergartner could master?  That was followed up with a lot of hateful emails that I passed on to the Dean of Students.  Just in case.

The "in case" being that one of these times a student might get really mad and, you know.  Throw some "erasers" my way.  Sometimes teaching and learning can feel like really emotional exercises.  They can sometimes change the way we see the world, or ask us to change ourselves.  Mostly this can be done safely.  That's what school is for, we hope.

But sometimes not.  Sometimes one of us misjudges our role or what we're supposed to be doing, and we act out.

These examples stick out for me after fifteen years of teaching because they are the outliers.  Mostly, students are respectful and fun and interesting and provocative, and they make my life so much better just from knowing them.  They make it a pleasure to show up to class.  A few here and there don't care for class or school or maybe me, and that's fine too.  But mostly, students are great.  They allow me to push them now and again regarding their beliefs or what they know or how they think, and they demand the same of me.  I don't need to throw erasers anymore, don't even think to.  We get where we're going pretty safely, mostly, and deal with our shake-ups productively.  I'm at a big university now, too, where the students don't take system critiques quite so personally.  That's pretty nice.

But I self-censored for a long time, out of a sense of self-preservation, and because I didn't always trust myself or my students to handle difficult things well, or with grace.

So I don't blame Sarkeesian for canceling her talk.  And I think allowing concealed weapons on campuses is madness (they were allowed at my previous university, and they're allowed at my current one, too).  Perhaps the data doesn't support my fear.  Perhaps I will someday be saved by a well-intentioned student carrying a gun who will be able to stop a mass shooter come to do me and my students harm.

But I have to think the elevation of violence all around, the willingness to engage our conflicts and difficult emotions through anything other than words--whether that's throwing erasers or shooting people--isn't good for anyone.  And we must all collectively decide to protect safe places for speech and growth together, absent the potentially to physically wound one another.