May 11, 2005

‘The Phantom Professor’

No one at Southern Methodist University knew — for sure — who The Phantom Professor was. The professor’s blog, like those of many untenured academics, was anonymous and the university was never named.

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Sure, readers learned that the Phantom Professor’s college had a lot of wealthy students, many of whom dressed alike, and many of whom weren’t particularly good writers. But that doesn’t really narrow it down. And the Phantom’s university was one where many adjuncts, like the author of the blog, felt invisible and ignored — not exactly an unusual quality.

But at SMU, at least some students and faculty members (and the university’s legal office) did become aware of the Phantom Professor and the many similarities between incidents at the Phantom’s campus and at SMU. And in SMU’s Department of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, people recognized themselves and their colleagues. And word got around that the author was probably Elaine Liner, a popular writing instructor and a theater critic for a local alternative newspaper.

At about the same time this spring that people were guessing that Liner was the Phantom, she was being told that the university no longer needed her services after the spring semester. Liner and her many student fans think that SMU is punishing her for expressing pointed opinions about the university.

“I cried when I heard that she wouldn’t be back,” says Carrie Ince, a junior. “She’s inspiring. She’s engaging. She really cares. And she got fired for using her freedom of speech.”

University officials don’t see it that way. They won’t talk about the specific decision not to continue offering courses to Liner, who had taught at SMU since 2001, but they say it had nothing to do with the blog and that they didn’t know for sure that the author was Liner. But they acknowledge that they were worried about the blog.

Rita Kirk, the department chairwoman, says that she received complaints about the blog from students and parents, and that she consulted with university lawyers about what to do about it. Kirk describes herself as a strong First Amendment supporter, but she says she worries that the blog violated students’ privacy rights and upset some students. “People need to remember that words can hurt,” Kirk says.

Liner, who agreed to go public with her identity for the first time for this article, says that her blog was about telling the story of academic life, warts and all. Liner started the blog in the fall of 2004, around the same time that she encouraged her students to try blogging. “I felt I had so many great stories to tell about students, and this would be a way to start writing them,” she says. Liner says that she told a few journalist friends about her blog, but spoke to no one at SMU about it. Her goal was to someday write a book about her teaching experiences.

The name of the blog represents her feelings as an adjunct. “You see a lot but you feel a little invisible. You feel like a phantom floating around the campus,” she says.

So she set about writing entries about her experiences — stories students would tell her about life on campus, stories about snooty professors who were rude to adjuncts, and more. “I just have this compulsion to tell stories,” Liner said. “I wanted to write from the deep inside, to be the person in the back of the faculty meeting or the person listening to what was going on. I wanted to write about what people don’t know about colleges.”

And indeed she writes about plenty of material that you won’t find in viewbooks. Student views of sex and sexual harassment. Use of Illegal drugs. Student stress (up to and including hospitalization). Crime on campus. Students who don’t know how to write well. And more. (After Liner was told this semester would be her last, she took much of her site down, but has since restored a large sampling, which you can read from the link at the top of this article.)

And the Phantom Professor didn’t just report, but added plenty of wry commentary, especially about dealing with wealthy students at SMU. Phantom called the wealthy female students “Ashleys” and didn’t hold back the sarcasm about them, sometimes noting whether a student she was discussing in a posting was or was not an “Ashley.”

While Liner never confirmed to students in class that she was the Phantom Professor, many said that they heard about the blog, started following it, and began offering her suggestions about subject matter. Liner says that she didn’t make fun of Ashleys for the sake of doing so, but because she identifies with other SMU students. She says that the university commendably offers scholarships to many low-income students, who arrive at a campus where it is hard for them to navigate the social scene.

“I loved discovering students who felt disconnected from their experience here and who were so happy to find someone who ‘got’ them,” Liner says. “They don’t drive the same cars as the Ashleys and they don’t carry thousand-dollar handbags. I’ve had so many young women come to me and say, ‘I don’t know what to do here.’”

When she wasn’t writing her blog or writing articles for various Texas publications, Liner was by all accounts a caring and demanding teacher. Her evaluations from students were high and several students interviewed say that they loved her classes even though she was tougher on them than were many other instructors. “She tore up my work, but I learned to become a better writer,” says one student who does not want to be identified for fear of offending professors in the department.

Many students who are Liner fans say that they love the blog. Brooke Beals, a senior, says that the first time she read Phantom Professor, it was a little uncomfortable. “She tells the brutal truth, and I had a lot of emotions,” Beals said. “But she’s a writer and that’s what she does and it should be supported.”

Added Beals: “Everything in there is true.”

Some of Liner’s supporters are even among the groups she mocks. “I am one of the Ashleys. I fit the profile totally,” said Ince. “But it’s true. You do see the same kinds of girls walking around this campus in the same clothes.”

Kirk, the department chair, said that not all students were as agreeable, and some of them — and some parents — were deeply hurt. Some students “felt that they could recognize themselves,” Kirk says.

The reason she contacted the university’s legal department, Kirk says, was fear that the blog might be violating federal privacy laws for students. But beyond the law, Kirk said that there was a question of ethics.

“When I’m a student and I talk to a professor about my grades or my health of my family, I assume I’m doing so in confidence,” Kirk says. And she also says she was worried about comments about the Ashleys, even if they didn’t focus on any one student. “I would hate to think that one of my professors was making fun of me,” Kirk says. “It showed a distaste for the university.”

Some students share that view. The Daily Campus, the student newspaper, published an editorial in which it said that the Phantom Professor was “superbly written,” but called the author “ornery” and said that the blog was “inappropriate and unprofessional.” (One response to the editorial asked, “Perhaps the Peeping-Tom nature of the blog — the nameless and faceless author lurking around the cyber underworld like the Phantom of the Opera, watching our every move — is a bit unnerving. Or is it the thought that someone, an insider, is exposing SMU’s skeletons to the rest of the world?")

Kirk says that she never asked Liner if she was the Phantom Professor because she had “no reason to challenge her directly on it.” If she had known Phantom’s identity for sure, Kirk says, “I can’t say it wouldn’t have entered into the process” of evaluating her.

While Kirk declines to say why Liner wasn’t being asked back, she says that the department was trying to replace adjuncts with full-time professors. But she acknowledges that the department will still be using adjuncts and that it is not clear that a full-time professor will be picking up Liner’s writing courses.

Liner says that she was “always sure to disguise identities and to alter details significantly that might pinpoint any particular student. Boys became girls and vice versa.”

She speculates that some students may think that Phantom Professor was mocking them when in fact it was just a student with similar characteristics. “You might classify some of the ‘Ashley’ stories as even more blatant composites, but the sorority girls do tend to blend into one thin, blurred blond,” Liner says. “Some of the stories are so common among SMU kids — the rampant bulimia, the outrageous budgets for clothes and cars, the airheads, the illiterate jocks and the plagiarizers — that any number of students who knew me or didn’t might identify with them.”

Liner says that many times students told her things in confidence and that she never violated those confidences. “It has never been my intention to embarrass or ‘out’ anyone,” she says. “I thought I was just writing funny, odd, touching little stories about my experiences on a campus and in a classroom. These are my stories, what happened to me. Any embellishments have been to add a touch of satire, some humor, a punch line. I write about stereotypes, recognizable sorts of characters that populate academia.”

After she was told she couldn’t continue at SMU, Liner took a hiatus from Phantom Professor. But she wrote recently that she’s been flooded with ideas from students who want her to tell about their experiences — such as “the cute male professor known as ‘hot pockets’ and the undergrad girls who swarm his office hoping to earn ‘extra credit’” or “Ladies’ room Stall No. 6 — aka Purge-atory.”

Wrote the Phantom Professor: “Thank you, one and all, for the submissions. We’ve only just begun.”

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

Ending institutional censorship

Another example of the suppression of free expression where it touches on the operations, decisions or workaday realities of our universities.

I hope insidehighered.com will gather together all the recent examples (and the few encouraging counter-examples) and look for the patterns of behaviour that inform them. I also hope insidehighered.com will suggest ways in which the almost universal regime of suppression and censorship of university staff concerning matters deemed by universities to be “secret” can be ended.

How can the institutional and bureaucratic censorship culture of our universities be ended? How can individual freedom inside institutions begin to be established?

George, Free expression? Where?, at 11:13 am EDT on May 11, 2005

“The reason she contacted the university’s legal department, Kirk says, was fear that the blog might be violating federal privacy laws for students... “When I’m a student and I talk to a professor about my grades or my health of my family, I assume I’m doing so in confidence,” Kirk says.

Which is why no one in academia would ever write a novel about life in academia.

Mike G, at 11:14 am EDT on May 11, 2005

I hope all this negative publicity about how things really are in higher ed will result in the crumbling of those ivy towers.

erp, at 11:23 am EDT on May 11, 2005

“We’ve only just begun.” In other words, the book is going to be “payback.”

Doug, at 11:24 am EDT on May 11, 2005

“Which is why no one in academia would ever write a novel about life in academia.”

Actually, *many* novels have been written by academics about life in academia. I know of 65, and one of my favorites is Malamud’s ‘A new life.’

Jim, at 11:35 am EDT on May 11, 2005

‘Higher’ Education is just low behavior.

It should come a no mean surprise that a professor should be fired for speaking her mind in this modern atmosphere of political correctness and thoughtcrime. Had the Phantom been a liberal firebrand, a Churchill or Chomsky, for instance, the establishment would have celebrated even the most slanderous descriptions of the university and made her a cause celebre.Instead the administration circled its legal wagons and declined to offer future employment under the guise of ’sensitivity’. Wake up, the ivory towers are dark caves where few new ideas are allowed to see the light of day. I lok forward to her book.

bill, at 1:11 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Phantom Professor

So, keeping an online web based diary of opinions is wrong?

What if I wrote an extensive tell-all book about SMU, as a professor or even teaching assistant, or as a student. Aren’t there First Amendment rights to be protected? Academic standards on First Amendment rights to be defended? Would this be equal cause for action? Are “books” more protected than words published online?

This reaction against blogs is startling and troubling. We’re treated to a daily dose of opinion and commentary from the media — who for decades have been calling their inuendo ‘facts’ — but when the shoe is able to get onto the other foot, it’s wrong?

This is profoundly disturbing, and smacks rather a lot of the kind of witch hunt tyranny you’d expect from Communist inquisitors bearing down on miscreants who don’t toe the Party Line. Speaking out of turn, saying things ‘not approved’.

Freedom is Messy. SMU can quite easily set loose an amazing backlash of tell-alls by trying to stifle dissent.

Besides, how is SMU’s Marekting of Image any different than an adjunct reporting a different image? Let’s examine the substance of both claimants and see which has legs.

Johnny Laredo, Cornell, at 1:11 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Jim, I would be interested in seeing that list of 65 books you mention in your comment. Is it posted anywhere?

bb, at 1:12 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

“People need to remember that words can hurt,” Kirk says.

Is this university or kindergarten???

Pam Colbe, at 1:20 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Liner’s Calculations...

Oh the joys of setting onesself up for martyrdom, and then nonchalantly acting as if said martyrdom was outside the scope of one’s intentions. After sifting through, and lifting away, the murky waters of Liner’s sloppy First Amendment violation claims, we all know the disgruntled professor is aiming for free publicity for her future “book,” or possibly more accurately, shoddy muckracking. Luckily for her, we’re all playing right into her calculations...

SMU Graduate with Distinction, at 1:20 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

To SMU graduate with distinction

What would be wrong with SMU authorities simply deciding that “we are a great university, secure in our ability to absorb insider/outsider criticism without need to retaliate"?

Ralph E. Luker, at 2:06 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Hmmmm... let’s say there’s a writer who wants to get a book contract. She uses, in her words, “embellishments” in a pre-book release website to make her work more intriguing. People say she’s been “fired” to further embellish the story. Is it just me, or has this scenario been instigated and executed by a writer looking to get publicity for a book contract? I applaud her, either way, but to make her out to be some sort of heroine or some poor soul... c’mon!!! Wake up.

Rachel, at 2:16 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

What crap!

This seems to be an accurate summary — a part-time prof who is working on her MA is ticked that she doesn’t have a Ph.D. She apparently accepted a part-time position, thinks she knows more than everyone else, violates student privacy at a private university, and while NOT fired, chooses to make this a free speech issue. If you want to work for a newspaper, learn to write. If you want to teach at a university, get the Ph.D. Stop the pitty party and move on with your life.

Caelia, at 2:59 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Academic novels

bb,

No, the list isn’t online. E-mail me at ringdingdr at yahoo dot com for the list.

Jim, at 4:42 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

The rest of the story

My dad used to listen to some radio guy who would uncover corruption and say “and now for the rest of the story.” Bigotry comes in all forms. Whether you descriminate against minority groups, the poor or (in this case) the wealthy, it is still discrimination. The good thing about blogs is that the uncensored thoughts tell what you really think. You had free speech — your blog was published. What you don’t want is consequences of that speech. I guess that’s why you took the blog down. Even the latest postings on the blog were self-censored. You left the clever stuff, but you took down all the nasty things you said about people. No wonder some respondents are making you a pin-up girl. They just need the “rest of the story.”

SMUAshely, at 4:43 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Pretty tame

The “Phantom Professor” finds that SMU has very few good students. Well, you know, this is like interviewing a porn star and expressing shock that he has bad morals. Put a suit on the porn star and give him a haircut, and he could pass for an OK guy. Provide a campus, faculty, students, etc. and SMU passes for an institution of learning. What’s the real agenda of places like SMU? To provide a good time and a degree to rich white kids who don’t care about ideas.It’s a disreputable business.

Hattie, retired teacher, at 6:17 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Bill,

She criticizes the rampant consumerism she sees at her institution. That sounds closer to the standard liberal position than the traditional conservative one. So I don’t see why you think she would have been treated differently (that is, better) if she had been a Chomsky, Churchill, or other lefty (after all, she’s pretty much on their side).

SMU Ashley,

What is discriminatory here? She mentioned the behavior, demeanor, and in some cases actions of a certain students (all carefully rendered anonymous, I might add). She does not seem to “discriminate” against any one of them, or against a cluster of them in toto. She may not like some of their traits — for e.g., the homogeneity of the “Ashleys” — but that is hardly discriminatory. If I say I don’t like the conduct of my wealthy neighbors, am I discriminating against them? Is that bigoted — and if so, precisely how?

And we can even leave by the wayside the issue of opinions or statements voiced in a blog and actions carried out in one’s (professional) life. If I write a blog about my rich neighbors (don’t tempt me), do they get to call me a bigot? Do they get to kick me out of the ‘hood?

Another few thoughts:Does she have any right to “academic freedom"? What is a First Amendent protection, if not the right to speak one’s mind? (I wasn’t crazy about the KKK in Skokie, but they even got to march as well as to speak!) And finally, so what if she is looking for publicity? Assuming, arguendo, that she is — that shouldn’t be a refutation of her basic rights, or her ability to rest on those rights, should it?

bb,

Have you read Straight Man, by Richard Russo? Hilarious. Other classics are Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis), Moo (Jane Smiley), Small Change (and anything by David Lodge). That’s off the top of my head...

Tiger, at 6:30 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

Her attitude towards students is worse than her alleged crimes

I’ve read the “The Phantom Professor’s” posts.

Boring. Self-absorbed.Seen better in student newspapers.

Her attitude toward students — “chunky"; “plastic"; “teetering on $500 shoes” — is good enough reason to get rid of her.

127 people were killed in Iraq since I got up this morning. Worry about that instead.

Cheers.

Greville, Adjunct Lecturer, at 9:08 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

I am a journalism student (oh and yes, my name actually is Ashley) at SMU and I found this blog both inaccurate and abysmal. I read Professor Liner’s entire blog and I am concerned with her personal code of ethics more than anything. When is it right to publish the fact that you have a “smelly” kid in class and mention him by name? Or, when is it right to copy and paste an e-mail from a student when it was not written with the intention of becoming a pathetic blog-post? A professor’s first obligation is to be encouraging and helpful. Thankfully, most SMU professors are nothing like Ms. Liner.

Ashley, at 9:34 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

lame

““Some of the stories are so common among SMU kids — the rampant bulimia, the outrageous budgets for clothes and cars, the airheads, the illiterate jocks and the plagiarizers — that any number of students who knew me or didn’t might identify with them.”

Rich kids, jocks, airheads: such a fertile imagination the writer has!

Did the perfesser get canned for teaching students the art of cliche-mongering instead of creating interesting and unique characters?

thibaud, at 9:50 pm EDT on May 11, 2005

blogger at smu

all of you who are crying “First amendment rights!” need to read Stanleyt Fish’s excellent essay in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Ed. He quite lucidly explains to all of you how having the right to free speech does not mean you have the right to no consequences for your speech. You can and will be fired, demoted, and otherwise criticized for speaking foolishly and irresponsibly in public, endangering your own credibility for doing so. that’s life people. GROW UP. none of us has the right to avoid consequences for our free speech.

ohsusanna, at 4:36 am EDT on May 12, 2005

Why Am I So Upset About This?

Ahem.

I see we have a number of posts on this page from SMU outsiders (like me), who mostly see the treatment of Ms. Liner as atrocious. And, then, the last few posts are from SMU’ers trying hard to defend their actions or attack Ms. Liner. Should these posters be fired/expelled from SMU from sharing their opinions? No. But that is what they did to Ms. Liner.

Do you defend the five students who committed plagarism in her class in the fall semester? (I read the old posts.) Their identities remained anonymous. I’m sure they are still enrolled at SMU.

To Ashley: Yes, you can post emails from students to a blog. The student’s ID was kept anonymous. The emailer did not ask the email be kept confidential. And a professor’s first obligation is to be “encouraging and helpful"? What about teaching? They are not customer service specialists. I disliked some professors who taught me the most. Maybe I disliked them because they were different from me, but they also had something to teach.

To Thibaud: “Rich kids, jocks, airheads.” So what? Have you no skin? Regardless of how widespead that stuff is, it isn’t peculiar to SMU.

Greville: Seen better in student newspapers? Well, not the SMU Daily Campus methinks. I read that editorial that first mentioned the blog, it didn’t even try to justify why they thought the blog was inappropriate. It seemed they simply had a personal dislike for her. And I certainly don’t believe “her attitude toward students” isn’t shared by many of her tenured colleagues.

SMUAshley: If you know how to work the internet, you can find all the old posts. I did and read them all today. Sure, she kept some of the best (like any good writer would feel compelled to do), like the Jack story. And yes, she did have free speech, and SMU had a choice about what to do. I think they made a poor choice, and I think it reflects badly on SMU. I believe in academic freedom.

Hattie: I hope what you say isn’t true. But I am concerned. I know very little about SMU. I have no idea why this story bugs me so very much. I guess its because I suspect the students are not getting a good education at SMU, by which I mean, learning how to think for themselves. And SMU is ranked #71 in US News. So these graduates are a good sample of what hundreds of colleges are producing, I fear.

Milowent, at 4:37 am EDT on May 12, 2005

The “warts” at SMU have already been in the local press, but someone should note that it is a good school. Every university has a good side and a bad side, but all things considered, there is a lot of good to be said about SMU.

As for the blog, it isn’t as if there aren’t a lot more of them ... generally the best way to deal with blogs you don’t like is to ignore them.

Stephen M (Ethesis), SMU isn’t a bad school, at 4:37 am EDT on May 12, 2005

More perspective needed

One thing that seems to be slipping through the cracks are the potential libel issues involved. Having read the blog almost from the beginning (before it was retracted, edited and reposted), I was horrified at some of the derogatory language used to insult the professors the author took on.

I am all for blogs offering an unfiltered view of an issue or system, but this person had plenty of opportunity to voice her opinion directly to the faculty she disparaged in her blog and she chose to remain silent. The “phantom” doesn’t seem to have been very vocal in person, and so some of her invisibility would appear to be self-inflicted.

The troubling part for any university about these types of communication is the potential risk of legal action by the faculty members disparaged (i.e., making belittling remarks about their physical characteristics) and the potential damage to the university’s reputation itself. Knowing many of the personalities involved, I find it difficult to believe that these particular faculty members allow intellectual dishonesty to thrive in their classrooms to the extent that the “phantom prof” claims.

Yes, the plight of the adjunct professor is a serious issue that merits discussion and debate. But it’s not like the tenure-track faculty have a cushy job. Though tenure-track faculty do make more money than adjuncts, most are on the lower end of the middle class in terms of salary. Add to the adjuncts job the additional burdens of research requirements, student advising and university service requirements, and it’s obvious why there aren’t many good blog written from the ivory tower perspective: few have the time that this adjunct appears to have had.

And let’s not forget these folks endured a decade of school and the hell that is a dissertation for the honor of slaving away for less compensation than most of their students will make immediately after graduation. Most junior faculty watch even this meager salary melt away under the financial burdens of repaying their crushing student loans needed to get their degrees.

I found the blog in question to be rather entertaining, and mostly harmless. It’s those few moments the author skirted the line of legal decency that make her unedited posts uncomfortable for those familiar with mass communication law.

jrich, tenure-track faculty at Southern Methodist University, at 4:39 am EDT on May 12, 2005

Respond, don’t suppress

If one finds the content of a blog or other medium objectionable, respond. Coercing silence by attacking a writer’s (blogger’s) livelihood is suppression and censorship.

The attack on free inquiry and expression continues, led by those who wish to keep university and college operations and decision-making processes as secret as they possibly can. The authoritarian impulse is at home on our campuses. Punishment of varying degrees of severity is meted out to miscreants. In the context of bureaucratic control professors claim rights that they deny to others.

George, at 9:51 am EDT on May 12, 2005

Legal Issues

Jrich: I enjoyed reading your thoughtful comment. As an attorney, I agree that legal issues should never be ignored. But I think the risk of any libel suit was negligible, and could be asserted, if it all, against the Phantom Prof. Not SMU. No one was identified by name, and opinion/parody is simply not going to be claimed as libel. I concede y’all are in Texas where Oprah got sued for libeling beef, but she still won.

When the blog was anonymous (both as to the identity and location of its author), no one could take offense. Some of what was said simply are conversations they will never take place otherwise, because they are too uncomfortable. The only real damage to the university comes from the negative reaction to how the discovery was handled. They could have made her add a disclaimer (that her views don’t represent those of SMU). They could have asked her to issue an apology and reprimanded her for whatever was wrong. But as you noted, “I found the blog in question to be rather entertaining, and mostly harmless.” Was the question asked: Is she a good teacher? She certainly seemed diligent, even discovering five students in her class who plagairized their papers in the fall. That’s a whole different outrage to me.

milowent, Attorney, at 1:20 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

I want more...

I am an adjunk that’s still in the trenches. I have found the Phantom Prof’s blogs quite comforting IN THAT I realize that I am not alone. I am not crazy. Bizarre things are happening to other profs also. I have laughed out loud at stories of students and administrators. Isn’t it better to laugh than cry? I would like MORE attention to the issues of students, faculty, etc. Just MAYBE something GOOD will happen! Bring on the book, PP! Go on Diane Rehms. SHE’s openminded enough to hear the debate.

Jan Sayers, at 1:20 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

Does anyone take the U.S. News evaluations of colleges and universities seriously? If so, why? I’m being sincere here.

Hattie, at 1:21 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

Anonymity and Defamation

milowent,

Generally what you say is true. However, the physical descriptions were too close for many of our faculty and students to not know who was being discussed. And the rude remarks about a particular person’s physical appearance was the kind of statement that can create hostile working environments.

When students read these blogs and the connections between that subject matter and their professors becomes clear, I would imagine a professor could charge that the blogger has caused damage to their reputation (we do live and die by student evaluations, after all).

Not naming the person does not always protect the speaker. If I made a threatening remarks about a “Texas oilman-turned baseball team owner-turned governor-turned U.S. president who owns a ranch in a small community in the Southwest” would that make my remark less actionable?

I’m just saying the blogger was too on-target with her descriptions. There was no doubt in the minds of anyone in the SMU community that we were the subject of the blog, and the students and faculty in the college under scrutiny were able to pick out the targets of the posts with relative ease.

As I said, I appreciate the plight of the blogger in question. And I think some of the posts that have been re-posted are quite valuable and even amusing. But some of the ones that were not recovered were simply hateful towards specific individuals, and individuals who could be identified by those who live in this community.

I wondered if the person who took the brunt of the criticism was considering a lawsuit, but that person suggested that her religious faith led her to dismiss the possibility, since she had never had a direct conversation with the blogger about these issues or statements.

But now with the blogger having gone public with her identity, I suspect the faculty member could easily pursue legal action if she so chose. I think the blogger in question should count her lucky stars that the derogatory assertions she made about the person she attacked do not seem to conform to reality.

Jrich, tenure-track faculty at Southern Methodist University, at 2:36 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

From one of the Phantom’s PhD Victims.....

At first blush, this story appears to be about an Adjunct wronged by an abusive system that wanted to protect its image and its high priced consumerist student body. As a scholar of organizational power and rhetoric, I must admit I would be intrigued and would be compelled to bash the system as well as make it the fodder for my next journal submission. However, what is missing from this story is the often vile, vicious, and purposefully hurtful and deceptive commentary that Liner offered up week after week about her colleagues and her students.

I must admit that if I were Liner and I had subjected my colleagues to the types of attacks that she did in her blog, I might not have been as forthcoming. After all, to tell the people who considered you a valued coworker and friend that you have been writing blogs that demean their degrees, academic and professional achievements, and personal appearance you would have to be downright crazy. Therefore since Elaine Liner is far from crazy, when a student came to me to tell me that a Phantom Professor had been trashing me in her blog, I refused to believe him and chastised him openly and quite harshly in class, reminding him that I would not engage in any behavior that would critique a faculty member in my classroom. Undaunted and looking out for my best interest, he came to my office after class and took me to the website. Imagine my horror and shock as I realized that someone had written the following:

FRIDAY, MARCH 04, 2005 Wide load Professor Widdeas had what she called her “Jerry Maguire” moment at the departmental faculty meeting yesterday. She’s the newest tenure-tracker, fresh from a mediocre Midwestern university, with a Ph.D. in something no one cares about. She recently was named a “rising academic star” by some obscure journal. That made the head of our department do backflips over such a “prestigious honor.” (Meanwhile, the writing awards I occasionally get are never mentioned by the boss or featured on the “Wall of Honor” in the hallway. …. Wideass is a well paid full-timer with a secure future at the university and all the health benefits her plaque-laden arteries will ever need. We adjuncts are delighted to have discovered she is widely despised by the undergrads. (One of the student aides slipped me a copy of Wideass’ student evaluations — one girl wrote seven pages about all the things she hated about her.) She’s a slob and a loudmouth who preaches to students instead of teaching them. Because she can’t shut up, her classes frequently run overtime, leaving the students to creep sheepishly into our classes with apologies, sometimes 20 minutes late. (The Phantom Prof, 2005)

One final frickin’ faculty meeting before the break. The Ph.D.-ism runs rampant and we un-Ph.D.’d types are starting to feel the pinch. Dr. Wideass, as I like to call her (her real name is spelled differently), is exerting her ego over all issues. She’s as likable as a sharp elbow in the solar plexus. But also deeply insecure (could be because she’s built like a beachball — she doesn’t walk, she rolls from side to side).The Ph.D.’s are out of touch with what students really want and need from us. Young by academic standards (I think all but one of this departments docs are under 40), they’ve spent their whole careers writing heavily footnoted, jargon-laden articles for journals no one reads. They write books that sell in the dozens of copies. They become experts at grant proposals so they can earn the extra dollar through research grants to fund a summer vacation in Rome or Buenos Aires. As usual, we non-docs were condescended to in today’s faculty meeting.We’re always the redheaded stepkids. If Dr. Wideass says one more time anything resembling “just an adjunct,” I’m going to meet her out by the flagpole after school and punch her lights out. (The Phantom, Prof, 2005)

Although her comments about my size, my recognition by the Chronicle of Higher Education, my alma-mater, and my values are painful, demeaning, and in all cases false (except I guess her depiction of my size—but no self-respecting Black woman would have a problem with being called a wide ass), I am over 35 and have learned that everyone who calls you a friend is not and that if you make waves you will make enemies. Furthermore, the sting of the words does lessen in time, although I must admit reading the “flagpole threat” again does tick me off as much as it makes me laugh.

Unfortunately, our students, those who are rich, as well as those who are poor, are simply undergraduates with an average age of 19. Many of them are not as well equipped to see their faults, their personal problems or those of their family written about so cavalierly and publicly by someone they trusted. Call them babies, call them immature, but they cry when someone they believed in betrays them; interestingly enough the tears of the rich look similar to those of the poor. I have never been rich and being an academic I don’t ever expect to, but one thing I know is that every student I have, rich or poor, straight or gay, black or white, liberal or conservative deserves to be valued inside and outside of the classroom. Alas, perhaps that is the rub—if you are a good teacher, you recognize that your students are more than characters for a novel; they are souls, who have wonderful potential. Sure they are frustrating, at times they are disappointing, and occasionally criminal, yet because of that grand potential for human good—the lessons and the spirit with which we teach them may make a difference even when we are not looking.

I believe that any communication scholar worth their salt would fight for Liner’s right to be heard on the abuse of Adjuncts, the impact of socio-economics on American education, or any other host of topics. But the educational system, which predates every other institution in the world with the exception of the Church (however, you choose to define it), makes clear that the voice of the individual is heard at the level which their length and service to the University has afforded them. The best advice I ever got was from some who was responding to my concern that as a doctoral student I didn’t have enough of a voice. She said, “If you want a voice at the table, finish your dissertation.”Elaine Liner, as well as those new found critics of SMU should not this important fact, that unlike other institutions, Liner was a participating member of our faculty, who had a seat at the faculty meeting table—even as an adjunct.

My apologies for my inattention to APA 5th edition, I didn’t have my handbook at home. I must admit I am a little jealous of Elaine who will undoubtedly get to write a book about her experience. Unfortunately, anytime we PhD types use human subjects for our research we have to go through IRB and make sure we protect our subjects. Damn the institutional bureaucracy!

Dr. Wideas, Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University, at 3:10 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

Daily Campus

It’s very disheartening when strangers are saying they are worried that SMU students “can’t think for themselves". I’d like you to know that I’m an SMU grad and I have a brain! When I attended SMU (which was not long ago) I had 2 jobs and worked very hard for my education. I’m still paying off my student loans and hopefully can save up for grad school. It’s sad that SMU gets the wrap of being Southern Millionaires University. Don’t get me wrong you can become over whelmed with expensive labels, cars etc if you allow it to happen. But overall SMU is a great school with great professors. I had opportunities there that many students at other universities only would have wished to have had. Do many students at public universities get to meet with the King and Queen of Spain, do they personally meet presidents (democrats and republicans alike), Barbara Walters, Rudolph Giuliani, do they get to shoot with the White House press core?

I’m very proud to say I attended this university. I had professors who knew me by name and staff who truly cared about my well-being. No matter what the perceptions are at SMU it’s not a school only for the rich. The one thing that no one ever mentions about SMU is that over 70% of the student body is on some form of financial aid. Granted the Ashley’s probably won’t admit to it but they take advantage of the aid too. I worked at the Administration office and I worked as an editor for the Daily Campus Newspaper so I believe I know a thing or to about the school.

If any of you are interested in checking out SMU’s student run and produced newspaper go to www.smudailycampus.com. Click archives and search phantom prof. Personally I found some of the articles/editorials lacking but you might want to check them out. Remember these are students and not professional journalists. Like many college newspapers the Daily Campus is in need of writers. It’s hard to find a staff of students who virtually work for free. We have to pay our tuition and loans-remember the majority of students at SMU are very worried about this! Since many of you that are reading this are professors and educational staff the DC has been absent an advisor for the semester so maybe one of you can help.I personally found the Phantom Prof blog very comical and to be honest I enjoyed it. You have to learn to laugh at yourself. I felt bad for a few of the students who even though weren’t identified by name anyone in their class who read the blog would know exactly who they are. Many students use their professors as counselors/sounding boards. Maybe we all thought they were sworn to secrecy about their discussions but through this blog we have learned nothing is kept in secret. Maybe that issue should be addressed in greater detail by staffs of higher education. I enjoyed hearing the behind the scenes issues and the politics facing faculty in colleges today. This blog has gone through many changes/editions, SMU’s procedure on tenure has gone through a lot of changes, so truly none of us know exactly why she is departing. But it’s safe to say this blog had something to do with it-or least that is my view of things. It’s sad that this lady will no longer be teaching at our school but I do hope she continues on with her blog. And as we all know it looks like she is going to be publishing a book. I think all of us who have been writing our comments here have helped her advertising-to bad we can’t get a commission check.

Jody, SMU, at 3:19 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

here is a thought

Just to let you know I’m just getting started. Keep reading. Did you know that 70%of SMU students are on financial aid? Who’s standards are in question here? It sounds like Ms. Liner’s standards are the real issue and a university should without question and are obligated by any moral and ethical standards to protect their students from unscrupulous adjuncts. Might I add that students going into the university might not be good writer’s yet...HMMMMM..... but isn’t that why they are there and the parents are spending so much money so that they can learn how to write. Or maybe they just need to skip college altogether since they apparently were supposed to know this before they arrived there Ms. Liner. It shows me that making fun of the learning process which is absolutely critical your entire life, not just college, shows me you need to be in another line of work. Ms. Liner, you need to get as far away from these students as physically possible and hopefully my girls will never run into the likes of you when they enter college. However, if they do I hope I have prepared them enough to know the difference between learning and you bullshit. But as a parent, if I caught you for one second messing with my child’s self esteem at a university level (like they don’t have enough of this crap in junior and high school), I and my daughter’s and every friend I ever knew would bury you in a second and you would never know what hit you.

You are a person with no life or integrety of any kind. I must add at the moment we are in short supply of these things and I sure would like to know that the next generations are learning something about these qualities from their classes instead of who carries what purse or what professor is cute.

Here’s another thought... anybody getting their self-esteem at the expense of another’s self esteem has some really big mental problems. Can they get rid of you fast enough...probably not. DARN!

I’m not done yet Ms. Liner, I get the distinct impression that your self-esteem is coming from belittling others, so I would suggest look around at all the truly worthy needs in the world (and we have far too many) and take that book you are going to write and enlighten and solve some of the truly important things in this sadly decaying society because of people like you getting so far off point.

Students at SMU, if you fall for this line of bullshit she have given you, I might suggest the tate lecture series to remind you there are much more important things to be putting your efforts into. Ms. Liner, I’m fifty with two teenage daughters and they are already better people than you will ever be because you just don’t get it.!!!!!!!!!!!! And for those people whom you have hurt, take a breath and realize this woman is a gentic fluke and don’t take what see says to heart and know there are so many others that think her behavior is outrageous and we will support you when you have to take dirty low down hits from a scum bag like her.

getalife, at 5:15 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

Dr. “Wideas",

Thank you for an amazingly frank, thoughtful, and eloquent comment. I was compelled to reconsider my views rather forcefully upon reading your words (even if I didn’t quite feel the phantom prof (hereafter PP) was the proverbial maligned innocent).

I think there’s a difference between having a voice at the (faculty) table and having a way of airing one’s deepest convictions about the life in which one is immersed. The former is a public institutional role; the latter, obviously, a private measure to think through, or come to terms with, certain needs. I think the blogsphere (if that’s what it’s called) sits at the interface of these two functions. At first glance, it seems much closer to the latter — an online journal, a venting place. But of course by virtue of its being on the internet, it is a public site, which pulls it into the orbit (or the penumbra) of the former, particularly when it becomes well known and well read. It becomes part, if you will, of the institutional discourse. And while that is not without its consequences, it is possible that a writer such as PP may not have had the foresight (or the imagination, or the acuity!) to think through the ramifications of what she was putting out there for all to read.

In short, the blog world, I think, is an uneasy space — and I don’t think we all know how to negotiate it.

In any case, what PP said of you is pretty devastating. I don’t care how comfortable you are with yourself (and you are way more than I am, it would appear!), it still has to be awful to hear oneself spoken of in such terms. What is worse than in the case of the “Ashleys", too, is that the portrait is individualized, rather than composite. I assume, further, that it was a somewhat recognizable one. That must be hard to excuse — indeed, I am not able to excuse it. The reasonable tenor of your comment persuades me, too, that she was far off course — but of course, there we see the power of your response, which you were not able to do when the occasion arose (you didn’t know it was there). That’s another disturbing part of the story: an “open” blog about a community, without its members having ready opportunity, until “notified” of their inclusion or identification in the blog entries, to respond, to take her on, to refute. How ironic that you were denied a voice at her table, no?

I still do not believe that firing, if it was a consequence of the blog, should have been the repercussion to which PP was subject (I’m never going to know, I suspect, if indeed it was). I agree with you that she should not have had a voice at the faculty table disproportionate to her status (as measured by the usual credentials, title, etc.). But should she be denied her voice on the internet? And should that voice become part of the evaluation of the professor herself? In my view, no. I don’t think it affected her view of the students — many of whom she seems to have treated with much more solicitude, individually at least, than with scorn — and I don’t think it affected her work, her teaching, or her evaluations. To the extent that it may have come to affect the work of her colleagues — well, that is another story. But no one seems to be alleging that, yet.

Jrich,

I do not see grounds for a libel suit. She was unspecific, kept up a veil of anonymity (which, even if pierce-able, was arguably pretty opaque), and (so far as I can see, although I believe the blog has been redacted?) I don’t think the “reasonable person” would find damage.

Getalife,

Defensive, much?

So, all those comments about the students PP cherished, appreciated, nurtured, and so on (and yes, there are a lot of comments there, if you’d care to read the blog instead of merely fulminating) are meaningless to you? That she can praise hardworking students and criticize lax or uninterested ones evinces a lack of “integrety” (sic) — how? Which student has she hurt, precisely? Oh yeah, a composite of wealthy ones — not, if you will note, the 70% on scholarship. So?

She does not mock the learning process — she champions it. She decries a lack of caring about education — please tell me you’ve been to an institution at which this isn’t a real, disturbing concern — and she spends quite a lot of time talking about how much she cares about educating. I’m hard pressed to see what you object to, there.

There are a ton of books by respected academics that mock the academic world. I mentioned some of those writers above (Smiley, Lodge, et al). Further, there are many out of academia who have taken a pretty critical stance of it — try Wolfe’s Charlotte Simmons, for instance, or Tartt’s Secret History. Do you revile them for their “disrespect"? What about those who draw on their colleagues (oh, I forget, you don’t care about faculty, just students) or their students — gasp — to inspire their fiction and give a feel of real life? Are they undermining your kids’ self-esteem?

You should take a page from Jody’s book and learn to laugh. She is a great spokesperson for what SMU should do — let the students read, learn, think, and walk away with their self-esteem bolstered by critical skills, rather than by overprotective mommies coming to their rescue.

Tiger, at 7:22 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

As an undergrad at SMU, I figure I might as well throw my hat into the ring. As a former public school grad (a minority at SMU), I must thank the pp for telling a truthful, no-holds-barred account of SMU. She successfully put into words what so many SMU students are too afraid to speak up about. Furtherfore, I fully pledge my support for the phantom prof, and it is truly unfortunate that us students at SMU will lose such a great “adjunct” professor. What I cannot understand is why some students and the administration would make such a big deal out of this. Some of these silver spoon students who can’t take criticism should try living on their own without daddy’s platinum card. Maybe then they won’t make such a big deal about one professor’s opinions and get her fired just because she said that they suck at writing or that they smell bad.

To Professor Wideas: I feel bad that the pp ripped on you. But isn’t it a compliment to say that you got a ghetto booty? If so, just shake what your momma gave ya.

To getalife: After reading your angry post, I must admit one thing: the phantom prof would have a field day correcting all your spelling and grammar errors. “You’ll bury her” with your friends and family? Are you insane? Judging by your poor writing skills, you probably never went to college anyway. So why the hell do you care about this situation? Deal with your midlife crisis elsewhere.

Tellin it like it is..., A concerned fratdaddy, at 9:11 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

This woman is an excellent writer with an excellent eye. She has a knack for getting the stereotypes right, for honestly discussing what really happens behind dorm and frat doors. So when is her book coming out? Hers will be the read all parents need before sending their kids off to school. I wish I’d had it a few years back — Maybe a screenplay would be good especially if the sillys at SMU decide to test her first amendment rights. They have certainly lost a fabulous professor — I hope one of my kid’s colleges will pick her up pronto.

rightontarget, at 10:12 pm EDT on May 12, 2005

A troubling commentary....

I don’t think anyone has ever questioned the writing skills of the Phantom Professor. Like others who have chosen to vent in a public forum, she will no doubt win legions of followers who value her comments. Perhaps the saddest part of this realization, is that it is due to her attack on people who have no means of response (and until recently no knowledge of the attack) that has won her these fans.

Interestingly enough, her attacks on the wealthy, the dim witted, or the student who doesn’t meet her standards, is much like the attacks of Bill O’Reilly, Mike Savage, and various other journalist/entertainers who are mean simply for the sake of ratings—she perhaps as found the easiest and most popular of targets—the rich. However, what is most troubling is that her lens, like all of our lenses, only represents a limited perspective of life at this University. And despite evidence that her “lens” is not always truthful, there are those like “Tell it” who will support someone who lied to her students and ambushed her peers.

I am a product of public schools and public universities (with a stint at a private university—but hey, public universities don’t have seminaries). I have over $100K in student loans to prove it. When I chose to teach at SMU, I did so knowing that many of my students would come from families that made more than I would ever see in my chosen profession. But what difference should a student’s family income make? I don’t hate the poor child for being poor and I will not hate the rich child for being rich. You see someone who will hate because of factors that are uncontrollable like wealth or lack of it, are the same people likely to hate because of other uncontrollable traits like race, ethnicity, or ableness. It is a very thin line....

The fact that some readers can condone the collateral damage done to undeserving individuals, whose flaw may be in their weight, their wealth, their intelligence, their addictions, or their failures is a sad commentary on our collective and our community.

To my dear “Right on Target” if the lessons that you want your children to receive are those of intolerance of failure or difference then perhaps the Phantom Prof is the one for them. It is my prayer that you are in an acceptable tax bracket or that your children don’t disappoint her or they may find themselves the subject of her next posting.

Dr. Wideas, at 4:38 am EDT on May 13, 2005

This ever-growing comment list is an example of the power of the individual/community debate as transformed by the Blog. In fact, you could say that this comment list *is* a blog, so to speak. The idea of cyberspace is maturing and we are only just discovering the repercussions of an individual’s material presence as beamed through their web persona and log entries.

T, isn’t it ironic, at 9:56 am EDT on May 13, 2005

lack of understanding regarding 1st amendment

The posters on this web site are obviously more intelligent than the average person but there is a complete lack of understanding regarding the 1st amendment as it applies to this case. The 1st amendment guarentees freedom of speech but it only restricts the federal government’s ability to restrict speech. It does not restrict one’s employer from taking disciplinary action in response to inappropriate speech. None of us could expect the first amendment to be of much assistance if we walked into our bosses office screaming and cursing at them, for example. In addition, Ms. Liner’s self-pity is tiresome. Although i agree that the working conditions for adjuncts aren’t satisfactory, she is isn’t under any obligation to work as an adjunct forever. In her case, lacking a PhD she isn’t even qualified for a tenure-track postion. Why not teach at a high school, where she would receive a better salary, benefits, pension etc? The only thing Ms Liner is a victim of is her own choices.

tony blair, at 11:01 am EDT on May 13, 2005

SMU: Legally correct, morally corrupt

The First Amendment does not protect one’s employment at a private university if one chooses to publish controversial matter. The First Amendment enjoins government from making laws abridging freedom of expression, but SMU is entitled to fire whomever it pleases, any time, for any reason. Whether it should is another matter.

It is surpassing strange that a church-related institution said to be dedicated to academic inquiry would terminate the employment of an effective teacher, not because of what has transpired in the classroom, but for publishing engaging, informed opinions on the Internet.

Shame on SMU: Legally correct, and no doubt politically correct in its north Dallas enclave; but morally and ethically bankrupt; morally, for not hewing to the higher purposes of education; ethically, for lying about why it terminated Ms. Liner.

Ron George, at 11:34 am EDT on May 13, 2005

Clear lines

I’m wondering how much of a role the murkiness of an adjunct’s position at SMU played in this situation. I was an adjunct (Ph.D.-level) for two years and I certainly identify with the sense of isolation and second-class departmental citizenship adjuncts experience. However, I never expected to be included in faculty meetings, committees, etc. To have a position where you can attend meetings, but not have an equal voice seems a recipe for anger, feeling disenfranchised and jealousy. Although it may seem unfair to distinguish too much between faculty and adjuncts, at least this would eliminate the expectation of equal treatment and thus perhaps reduce resentment. Separate but not equal may be better than included but subordinate. Ajuncts are never going to be treated the same as faculty, but perhaps this position could be improved if the focus was on the unique contributions adjuncts can make, i.e. ability to focus solely on teaching.

MR, at 11:45 am EDT on May 13, 2005

After reading most of the postings in response to the issue of “The Phantom Professor,” I must say I am rather disheartened. My initial thoughts were very much in support of free speech, leaning more towards support of the commentary about the academic institution and Ms. Liner’s experience as an adjunct than about what perhaps may be a “social commentary” about the students and staff. I had not read any of the actual blog until I read the piece posted by Dr. Wideas and was quite disgusted. Although this does not change my view of free speech, it certainly changes my opinion about whether Ms. Liner should be appaulded for her frank criticisms of academic life. The posting which primarily made personal, degrading remarks appeared to me to be extraordinarily juvenile and lacking in any meaningful critique and/or creativity. It would be great if injustices, whether in acadmia or all around us were given an audience so that we don’t continue down a path of blind destruction but from the one posting I did read, I am not convinced that Ms. Liner is actually doing just that. Whatever astute critique she may make would be lost for me—obscured by childish namecalling.

I applaud Dr. Wideas for adding to the commentary—that I believe takes more courage than the writing of Ms. Liner. Perhaps what could come of this is a more thoughtful analysis of changes that could be made within academia that would support both the students and the professors—tenured, untenured and adjuncts alike.

Karen M.—in the midst of the PhD process...

Karen M., at 11:45 am EDT on May 13, 2005

amazing il-logic

I had to read the story again after I read the comments. Apparently, many people like to assume that Ms. Liner’s contract was not renewed because of the blog. That’s not what the story says. I’m sure it is useful for those who want news coverage to elevate it this way. But those are facts are not established.

Further, employers have restrictions that employees do not. Employers, for example, are restricted as to the amount of information they can disclose about personnel issues. I am not suggesting that there is anything in this story to suggest that Ms. Liner has done anything that would result in her bing fired “for cause,” but I do suggest two arguments. First, we don’t know what she was not renewed. Second, as a contract employee, the university does not need to provide cause when they choose not to renew a contract.

Therefore, if cause is not needed to terminate, why would SMU put itself in the position of firing her on an issue that would have repercussions in the media? Perhaps there is an alternate explanation. As some who have posted here suggest, this is great publicity for her upcoming book. Additionally, she gets her pound of flesh from an institution that has not renewed her contract.

Please, my fellow academics. Let us walk this road carefully. There is always more to a story than is printed.

1st amendment advocate, at 12:57 pm EDT on May 13, 2005

GOOD POSTS AND BAD POSTS

I applaud Dr. Wideas for contributing her opinion and being willing to share the posting that was about her. I can see how people put it together who it was about (even I did on my lunchbreak using the internet). That was not a kind post, even if any of it was true. It does put some more perspective on SMU’s decision.

But I don’t want folks to get the impression that all the Phantom’s posts were mean-spirited. Go to the blog and read the Jack story, for example. There was a lot of good in this blog. (Ann Althouse has blogrolled her, BTW). Ms. Liner needed to stay anonymous and not share so many details if she wanted to keep this going, I guess this outcome was inevitable once she was found out.

Milowent, Attorney, at 4:06 pm EDT on May 13, 2005

When an institution receives federal funding (and which university these days doesn’t?), its rights and responsibilities can change significantly. For instance, its ability to shun recruiters whose policies are not approved (say, “don’t ask, don’t tell") is subject to a different kind of scrutiny and a potentially different set of ramifications. In the military recruiting case, this is being hashed out now.

To say that SMU is private and therefore not subject to the First Amendment is, I think, hasty and not entirely established. I think good ground could be made for its actions being held accountable for violations of free speech protections — just as is being disputed presently in the military recruiting cases before various circuits. So let’s not dismiss those grounds quite yet.

Further, it’s correct to say that we can’t tell whether or not PP’s blog was a factor in her firing. It is alarming, however, that the SMU representatives *in her department* have made comments like “if we had known, we can’t say it wouldn’t have been a factor". In other words, yes, we think it is a relevant feature. This is what is giving rise to the concern: that an anonymous blog could “count” in the hiring/firing process.

It’s well and good to say you can fire an adjunct at will. Legally, of course that is true. But as “adjunctification” continues to be the trend, is this an optimal position to take (with satisfaction or resignation)? I mean, let’s consider the normative question: should institutions be free to take anything — including anonymous blogs — into account when making decisions re adjuncts?

Tiger, at 4:06 pm EDT on May 13, 2005

Blogging and Employment: Sticky Issues

Whether we like it or not, we live in a time where what one posts in a blog has real-world consequences for his or her employment opportunities.

Mark Jeb was reportedly fired from his job at Google for what he wrote in a blog about the company. Steve Olafson was fired after stating opinions about the Houston Chronicle, even though he used a pseudonym ("Banjo Jones” Here’s a link to the story: http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2002-08-08/hostage.html/1/index.html).

And do we really need to be reminded of what consequences can occur for those who, failing to write their own blogs, become involved in the blogswarm around their own words (Trent Lott, Dan Rather, Jordan Eason)?

Freedom of speech does not mean that anything we say has no consequences.

Jrich, tenure-track faculty at Southern Methodist University, at 6:00 pm EDT on May 13, 2005

the lessons i learned

the lessons i learned are:

don’t speak at all, not even engage in daily conversation about your experience, because telling stories means inevitably being misread or misinterpreted if one finds the stories annoying or to their distaste.

don’t blog at all, because your supposed/illusioned secret identity has always already gone public and that you are just lucky that you are not one of them, the Ms. Liners.

don’t teach at all, because teaching potentially means hurting your student’s feeling. let’s just pretend nothing happens.

kralyx, at 6:16 pm EDT on May 13, 2005

More on the Phantom Prof and Libel

My name is Afi Scruggs and I live in Cleveland.

I found out about the phantomprof because I wrote a letter to Jim Romenesko’s media site pleading for help from my colleagues. I’m a reporter who made the transition to journalism teacher and I needed support. The phantomprof emailed me with her real name and the url to the blog. She asked me not to out her and I haven’t.

I read the blog regularly. I didn’t have a clue that the college was SMU, nor did I know who anyone was. Since proving identification is a big part of libel, Liner might be safe.

She’s also safe, I think, because no one seems to have been damaged by her comments. Defamed maybe, but not damaged. No one has lost a job. Except Liner.

Maybe my skin is thick because I was a metro columnist for four years. I got called everything but a child of God on a regular basis. I know how much words can hurt.

But I identified with Liner’s posts. She seemed to have described the joys and flaws of teaching. It was great to know that someone else was sharing my experiences: the students who sense of entitlement led them to expect A that they didn’t deserve; the lost students who found themselves through their work in your class; quirky and pretentious faculty members.

Sorry, Dr. Wideas. As I said, I understand how words can hurt. By the way, I disagreed with Liner’s comments about you and told her so. Have you contacted Liner personally to share your feelings with her? Ask for an apology if you feel you deserve one. That’s a better way to get stuff off your chest than posting to this list.

I loved the blog and will miss it. It’s great writing, much better than the stuff the students are posting. Here’s how I know: she’s moved this audience so much, we’ve all written to comment on her work.

What better proof of her expertise?

Afi SCruggs, at 5:23 am EDT on May 14, 2005

Mr. Alf in Cleveland—

Thank you for your advice to contact Ms.Liner. However, please understand that my first posting was to simply “round out the debate” about the blogger’s intent and the impact it had on others. Please keep in mind, I have kept my comments about the content of her blog not about her as a person.

Ms. Liner saw me for several weeks after the blog hit the campus and after this article she is no doubt aware of my knowledge that she was the one to say these things. Therefore to request an apology, when none was offered in genuine regret, would ask her to lie again—to apologize for a wrong she did/does not think she committed. And if nothing else, I would like for Elaine to remain true to herself.

Finally, Alf, keep in mind lots of things can cause great movements—including laxatives (sorry, the door was so wide open for that one).

Dr. Wideas, at 4:44 pm EDT on May 14, 2005

academic freedom

Because diverstity of opinion and diversity of expression are valued at our colleges and universities, tenured faculty are protected by principles of academic freedom. They cannot be fired for voicing unpopular ideas. However, adjuncts and other contingent faculty are not so protected. Whether you like or dislike Ms. Liner’s blog, were she a tenured faculty member, she would not have been vulnerable to losing her job because of what she wrote there. Adjuncts, always in a precarious position, are often reluctant to express their opinions other than anonymously. While more discretion in parts of the blog might have been desirable, self-censorship should have been unnecessary. Attempted ensorship by the unversity, however, is intolerable.

Betsy, Adjunct with a Ph.D., at 5:35 pm EDT on May 14, 2005

Ms Liner — Kuddos to you for finding humor in the day-to-day tasks of teaching. As someone who has 7-years teaching (tenured of course)- I’m finding it more and more difficult to find the joy in education. A blog might’ve been just the ticket for inspiration. It seems so have sparked the SMU community.

Today’s students seem to be clones of Ashley (May 11th). Self-righteous, they KNOW what MY first obligation as a professor is — encouragement and helpfullness. And to think I spent wasted time and cash on all those grad school courses in pedagogy and andogogy — I should’ve asked Ashley. Who knew? Ethics? More money down the drain....I’ll bet Ashley would just prickle at the chance to keep my integrity in tip-top shape. So wise in the ways of the world is our Ashley, sooooootolerant and objective. I get tingles thinking of her graduating with her journalism degree and embarking on her career as a cub reporter —custodian of the truth. I’ll bet the FOX new network is already recruiting Ashley.

I really agree with Karlyx (few days ago)....whata a truly bland and unimaginative world we are morphing towards. When the price of creatively expressing an opinion is your gainful employment, well......you can bet,.... wait a minute...... (where is the delete button, can big brother track my e-mail address...oh shit, what was I thinking...I’m no where near retirement).......

Miss Manner, at 5:56 am EDT on May 15, 2005

Dr Wideas, I commend you for the generally calm tone of your responses here, particularly since you suffered criticism by Elaine Liner that was so —let’s be honest— shallow and mean-spirited.

But blogging is like life: there are no editors or peer reviewers to catch a moment’s stupidity or foster healthy second thoughts. And, contrary to the bon mot, the only ones always at their best are not the mediocre, but the dead. Elaine Liner isn’t dead, except perhaps in academia.

Because I was happy to give you full marks for your mild and insightful first response, I blinked in surprise on seeing this in your second:

“But what difference should a student’s family income make? I don’t hate the poor child for being poor and I will not hate the rich child for being rich. You see someone who will hate because of factors that are uncontrollable like wealth or lack of it, are the same people likely to hate because of other uncontrollable traits like race, ethnicity, or ableness. It is a very thin line....”

I can’t believe you’re serious here.

It’s clear that a person has no choice about skin color or physical ability. And generally one has little choice about poverty—especially today, in the US.

But the same is not true of wealth. Anyone can choose to walk away from family wealth, and some do, determined to make it as far as they can on their personal merits. Accepting and exploiting family wealth is like accepting the family religion: a choice, not an affliction.

I can’t understand how it can seem less clear to you than to me that Ms Liner objects not to the wealth qua wealth, but to the unexamined certainty of entitlement and privilege displayed by too many of the Ashleys and Bunnys and Travises.

If Ms Liner were inclined to cross the ‘thin line’, her history suggests she would not choose Black people or the disabled as her targets. I think your innuendo was ill-conceived.

Mairead MacDonald, at 11:18 am EDT on May 15, 2005

Dr. Wideas’ response to my posting

Dr.Wideas, thanks for your reply. I understand your position better now. By the way, my name is not “Alf.” It’s Afi Scruggs. And it is my real name.

As a former journalist, I believe in bylines.

Afi Scruggs, at 2:17 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

What’s so hard to believe?

The fact that none of us knows why her contract was renewed has already been made more than once on here. I’d like to add, though, that her own statements have provided plenty of hints at other reasons why she might not have been asked back, such as:

“I’ve written ‘This stinks’ on student assignments.” — February 17

It’s also clear that she’s carrying a lot of bitterness that goes back a long way:

“For some of us, graduation means never having to talk to the pageant-obsessed suitemates and slutty, bulimic roomies again.” — February 25

Interestingly enough, her disdain seems directed at those who are better off than her financially, physically, socially or professionally. Being jealous doesn’t make her wrong, of course, but it does suggest that there may be an attitude that hurt her chances of having her contract renewed.

Finally, and this is just a personal opinion, I simply didn’t find her writing to be particularly good and isn’t that what she was being paid to teach? Her fondness for stereotypes has already been noted, but her blog is also sprinkled with things like:

“I ran into Bob ... at the bad Chinese joint (where) the lunch special was Ptomaine Lo Mein. We chatted over a long lunch that day and I heard Bob’s life story, which he told with relish (and a sprinkle of soy).” — May 5

I don’t know why her contract wasn’t extended, but to suggest that it was for reasons other than the blog seems entirely credible to me.

Justin Playfair, at 2:45 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

Apologies and Clarification

First of all, my apologies to Mr. Scruggs for not using the bifocals the good Lord gave me—please know that I meant no harm.

Secondly, I think Mairead MacDonald makes some excellent points as she asks the question: “Are you serious?”

MM, I do concur with you about the exploitation of wealth and the fact that how one chooses to use that wealth is a great indicator of character, after all I am a Liberation theologian.

However, what I am referring to is the assumption that all of our 18,19, & 20 year old students have had the opportunity BEFORE college to critically examine their wealth. Many of these students, much like students from less privileged backgrounds, are just beginning to question their social positions and the world around them—so why should I expect any student in this age group to have completed a process that many 30 year olds haven’t begun?

Our roles as educators, particularly those of a post-modern/critical perspective like myself—(here I lean on the work of Foucault and Stan Deetz) is to begin to create a little dissonance (in fact a whole lot of dissonance) for all of our students about the assumptions they hold of this world and their place in it. Now it could be argued, and I believe it has, that Ms. Liner is creating that dissonance with her blog.

That argument cannot be sustained for two important reasons—she did it in secret, thusly negating any chance of educational engagement and she often crossed the line into personal attack. Finally, she held these students up to ridicule for what she states is a personal motive: to vent and to one day right a book.

As for your last point, I want to tread delicately. I want to make it clear that I do not believe that Elaine Liner would ever ridicule an individual’s race, ability, or sexual orientation—but then again I never thought she would malign a peer either.

With that being said, allow me to point out some things for the sake of reflection: 1) I was the most junior of the tenured track faculty 2) The comments that got me in hot water with Ms. Liner had been echoed on occasions by others 3) Her depiction of other faculty members focused mainly on their comments but rarely on their character or physical package (except in the recent post Office Hours) 4)My words were woefully misconstrued (fictional)

So why did I earn her ire—why did I earn the “flagpole” threat if I chose to speak again? Why did she chose to make fun of my size or why did my accomplishments get termed mediocre? Was it the fact that I as junior (and nobody likes the new kid)? Was it the fact that I was over a size 16? Was it because I am black? Or was it because she didn’t like me? We will never know...I am hoping it’s the final one—it is easier to understand.

Dr. Wideas, at 3:14 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

All God’s Chidren

One of the Ashleys here again. I cannot believe what I’ve been reading. One person suggested that, unlike being poor, you can choose to walk away from wealth and, therefore, lead a virtuous life based on merit. I have been taught that God gives each of us gifts. Yes, wealth is one of those. My family generously gives money to aid in numerous causes that help real people. Ms. Liner, who did you help with this blog?

Further, who says I don’t make it on my merits? I work hard. What does money have to do with a work ethic? You see, we get to make all sorts of choices to make this world better or worse for our presence. The education I am receiving at SMU is superb. Believe it or not, the professors (with a few exceptions like Ms. Liner) could care less how much money my family has. They look at me as an individual and stress the need to find my talents and think of their application for the betterment of society. Yes, my family will probably support SMU financially at some point. But they will do so because they have an educational mission that is far stronger than the one Ms. Liner expresses.

Honestly, I hope you find some peace, Ms. Liner. When you do, I’m sure you will find that the world needs talented writers who will work to make life better for others.

SMUAshley, at 3:45 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

so refreshing to meet a truth teller.

I admire Ms. Liner. She seems to have the personal integrity that prevented her from selling her creative soul to the corporate dollar devil — be it a commercial, academic or generic money-demon.

Not that there’s anything wrong with money. For, just like love, it makes the (human) world go around. Ms Liner expresses far more love for herself than she does for a dollar, or so-called security, or having one’s face fit into the collective mechanism of for-profit academia.

Not that there is anything wrong with the Ashleys, etc, of the world, either. Somebody has to go through life in a trance, so the rest of us can say “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Elaine Liner strikes me as a sensitive, caring, perceptive and intelligent human being who found herself between the rock and hard place of her personal convictions and values, as opposed to fitting in, keeping quiet and sinking into a morass (life) of quiet desperation just so she could avoid making waves.

Thank you, Elaine Liner, for being true to yourself. That takes a lot of courage. As Frederick Nietzsche so eloquently reminds us — “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”

As they used to say in Northen England, where I grew up: “Aye, well, good on yer, lass, tha’z got whot it teks ta come owt ov it right gradely.”

In plain English — Ms Liner is a natural winner, because she has style, class and the courage of her convictions — and she lives them.

regards,

David Bromfield

David Bromfield, at 5:14 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

SMUAshley: You are truly clueless. Perhaps you are getting an exemplary education at SMU but one wonders if critical thinking and analysis are part of this educational package..? Your tendency to repeatedly misconstrue Liner’s comments makes me think otherwise. Having wealth or coming from a wealthy background persay is not the issue with Liner...it’s the sense of entitlement, the dismissiveness, the manipulation, the material waste, the ‘not taking education seriously because you won’t starve if you don’t’ get decent employment’ attitude. Most U.S. professors (esp. English profs like her) are hard-working and underpaid. The best profs — the truly good ones — teach because they love their field and are committed to imparting knowledge. But when students aren’t receptive; are flakes; don’t do the work but expect (demand?) good grades; don’t try; view education as a bit of a joke or tedious — and worse knock out alot of deserving middle and lower class kids because their Daddy’s can’t afford the full tuition like their Daddy’s can — well, SMUAshley, lemme tell you — Liner’s not the only one who has a problem with the “Ashley’s” in the world. Why bother going to school if you aren’t there to grow academically and emotionally? If you only want a MRS. degree, meet him at the country club. That’s the issue here. It’s not whether or not you have money. It’s that you lack initaitive and do not take your education seriously. It’s offensive. It’s tiresome. It’s sad.

And of course it sounds like she would like to have a bit more money — why not? Who wouldn’t want a decent vacation over spring break? Or go out for a nice dinner and bottle of wine sometimes. I mean, get real.

rightontarget, at 5:34 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

Dr. Wideas,

You are the best spokesperson for SMU, the institution, that I have known. My impression of your school was never particularly high (pace, SMUAshley and cohorts), but I have revised it (with a humble apology for generalizing appended) thanks to your fine and eloquent writing.

I thank you, as I am sure your colleagues do, for bringing such a thoughtful voice and insightful perspective to academia.

Best, “Tiger”

Tiger, at 9:08 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

The prof. was wrong

How stupid could the prof. be.

Anyone who has seen her blog would notice how she mentions things that students told her in confidence.

She voilated a lot of basic rules. And made the school liable for legal action.

Any one that would defend that hack needs to check into a mental ward.

reggie, at 9:59 pm EDT on May 15, 2005

Dr Wideas, thank you for your response.

“However, what I am referring to is the assumption that all of our 18,19, & 20 year old students have had the opportunity BEFORE college to critically examine their wealth. Many of these students, much like students from less privileged backgrounds, are just beginning to question their social positions and the world around them—so why should I expect any student in this age group to have completed a process that many 30 year olds haven’t begun?”

I would suggest that the evidence is against you, here. Kohlberg found that higher-order ethics appear with adolescence; PETA and similar organisations rely on that. In adulthood people are expected (by the Establishment, of course) to abandon their ‘immature idealism’ and ‘maturely’ accept the inequalities their culture creates and magnifies.

I’d also ask: why should overprivileged young adults be given yet another unearned cosseting? The children of the poor begin to learn as toddlers that their world is a barren one; that their expectations are to be meager. They grow up—if they grow up—aspiring to no more than a job in retail or to be sent to kill or be killed in places like Iraq. And they look out of newspapers with poverty-dulled eyes, charged with the war crimes their privileged age-peers escaped by virtue of that privilege. If the children of poverty must learn about manufactured inequalities in childhood, what could possibly justify continuing to shield the oblivious adult children of wealth from the implications of their privilege and obliviousness?

“Our roles as educators, particularly those of a post-modern/critical perspective like myself—(here I lean on the work of Foucault and Stan Deetz) is to begin to create a little dissonance (in fact a whole lot of dissonance) for all of our students about the assumptions they hold of this world and their place in it. Now it could be argued, and I believe it has, that Ms. Liner is creating that dissonance with her blog.

You don’t see the double-bind in your objection? If she hid their identities, then how can you charge her with holding *them* up to ridicule. With ridiculing paper dolls, perhaps, but surely that’s different?

And is it always necessary for a teacher to impose personalisation on the teachable moment? I’d think that literature itself depends on the reader’s own willingness to identify with characters and situations that are, in the end, abstractions. Does anyone ever willingly read without learning?

I have no problem agreeing that Ms Liner is flawed. I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that she often fails to live up to her own standards. And I’m perfectly willing to criticise her for her displays of petty nastiness, as toward you, that I would presume were poorly motivated and even less well thought through. But I find it hard to be dismissive of her because of her flaws. Were we all required to be perfect, can you think of anyone who would be here today?

Mairead MacDonald, at 9:31 am EDT on May 16, 2005

Trust me — I am not an advoate of violence in a civilized society — but I think if we put boxing gloves on Wideass and Ms Liner and stuck them in a ring, it would probably be the best solution to this situation. Or those really cool mexican wrestler outfits......yeah...then it would be both entertaining and theraputic.

People need to growth a thick skin tolerant enough to hear how others percieve them. What a buch of politically correct whiney babies we’ve (the global we) have become. I don’t know if many people can remember the classic movie critic Joe Bob Briggs? He was so far off the politically-correct radar, but funnier than whatching two academics duke it out mucho-lucho style.Sell tickets, I’d buy. Use the dinero to pay Ms Liner to teach — and get on gettin on.

MMMMMMnnnnkay, at 9:49 am EDT on May 16, 2005

I’m not an academic, but many of my friends are. The big difference between them and me is that I can say what I like, but they can’t. They are forced into a cautious kind of discourse in the classroom and in their writings. In faculty meetings, which I have from time to time attended as an outsider,nothing substantive ever gets resolved, because everyone is so careful. I suppose that all important matters are settled behind closed doors. Where the truth of how faculty really feel comes out is in the hallways and at parties. Cigarettes and alcohol and other drugs cause people to let down their guard, and all the anger and hatred come out (and the funny stories, too). I see this blog as kind of an extension of this simmering repression and hostility that exists at all colleges, probably exacerbated at SMU by an atmosphere of affluent mediocrity. See. I can say what I like!

Hattie, at 1:59 pm EDT on May 16, 2005

An Open Letter to Elaine

Elaine, since this all started, I have wanted to talk to you. But the blog was a real deterrent; I didn’t want whatever I said reworked to your satisfaction. Thus this open forum letter.

As the one who has known you the longest, and the one who recommended you for the job at SMU, I have had many people ask me what happened to cause such anger and hostility. I had to honestly say that I didn’t know. I needed time to think and process to understand. As I have followed the comments here (since you have now blocked the ability to comment to the blog itself), I find myself wanting to protest, discuss, analyze and understand what happened to my funny friend with the acerbic wit and devotion to teaching.

1. The blog —The first thing you should do in the interest of full disclosure is to put up the whole blog. Most responses I have seen are from people who have read the edited version you left up, not the full blog with its evisceration of the chair and petty, mean, cruel comments. If you want to take this to the mat, have the courage to be truthful. More truthful than you were when your students in Ethics asked if you were the Phantom Prof and you denied it. And enough of the censorship garbage. No one ever said a word to you about doing the blog.

2. The job — You knew, as I have always known, the deal with higher education. To join the party you get there in one of two ways. There is a front door that requires a PhD and a commitment to research and publishing in addition to teaching. In some places there is a side door where the need is about teaching more than research, which is where you and I came in. Coming in this way brings less money, less recognition and less voice. Is it right or fair or just? Probably not, and that argument is happening around the country with greater use of full-time, non-tenure-track lecturers such as myself and adjuncts such as yourself. But the PhDs have their own road to walk that requires jumping through hoops of research and publication that I don’t envy. You and I do this because we love to teach, a sentiment I have heard from you on more than one occasion. Because we love towatch the bulb go off when the student produces a sentence of clarity and simplicity—the result, we know, of clear thinking.

We came to this by choice, Elaine. And you knew the deal before you came back to SMU after your stint with the paper. You came back to SMU knowing full well that getting the few spots of full-time non-tenure-track teaching meant waiting until one came up. You also knew that spots were given first to those who had advanced degrees. I was an adjunct for three years with an MFA before being offered a full-time job — but I remain on a renewable 3-year contract after 16 years. As the only lecturer on the committee created by the provost a few years ago to look at this issue, you can be sure I pointed this out when they said, “Talk openly.” Yeah, right. I looked around the room at a table of tenured faculty and said, “I am on a 3-year renewable contract. I have no job security, I have questionable academic freedom, and I am at the lowest pay level on the campus.”

This is the reality of what we chose. We did it not for the money or recognition or the seat at the faculty meeting, but because we love to teach — and we are in a department that celebrates good teaching and lets us get the job done the best way we see fit. And let me for a moment address your supposed relegation to the back of the room at faculty meetings. Every faculty meeting I have ever attended at SMU was a called meeting (to which you were always invited but seldom came). We gathered in a seminar classroom, sitting at whatever seat was available. If you got there before me, you sat at the table. If you chose a chair against the wall, you relegated yourself to that position.

No one would have been organized enough or cared enough to assign seating at a faculty meeting.

3. The students — I could see the faces of the young women you referred to as the “Ashleys.” But they are only a small part of the faces I see each day. So much has been made of our students’ wealth. For some it is evident in their accessories, that is true. But with few exceptions, I have no idea which student is on scholarship and which is full pay. I went to SMU on loans (the fourth college in a very checkered academic life) and had that bias as a student when I saw how wealthy students threw away a chance I struggled for. I bemoaned how easily everything came to them, knowing now that, far from an advantage, wealth is a different kind of poverty for those students and one that is harder to recover from: poverty of spirit. But you can’t generalize. I also knew great students who were wealthy and those who weren’t.

But the faces you draw are only a few of the ones we see. What of the good students from wealthy families who work hard and do well? What of all the middle-of-the-road students for whom we are the first to say “this is it, go do it,” and they do?

They are the majority of our students, but, of course, they don’t make good copy, do they?

Then it hit me why you did this. The book. I don’t know when you began seeing your students as characters, but on that day you should have given your notice. On that day you decided to betray a sacred trust we have with our students to see them at their most vulnerable and not use it against them. We have their hearts and souls in our hands and to betray that is to go beyond any First Amendment issue. On that day you started using us, Elaine, not the other way around.

In that decision to write about SMU I think you knew at some level that to do it with that scalpel of a tongue you would need to make us the enemy. It makes better copy.

Elaine, I don’t know what the future holds for you. I hope it is what you want. I will miss you my funny friend. All the students will miss the teacher you once were. But mostly the ones who will miss you are those you met with in your office on the weekends for one-on-one tutoring; the ones who turned their souls over to you for safekeeping on paper; the ones who continued to seek you out as they went on to other classes, knowing that you “got them” when no one else did; the ones you looked in the eye with the message, “I will fight for you no matter how obnoxious you are because I see beyond that.”

And I hope that when the book comes out, it will be labeled fiction, which is where it belongs.

Kathy, at 8:41 pm EDT on May 16, 2005

Kathy,

I think you are disingenuous, illogical, and full of it.

First, just because you “know the deal” doesn’t mean you don’t get to bitch and moan about it. True, a thinly veiled website MAY not be the best place, strategically, to do so. That’s a fair cop. But to chastise PP with that psuedo-sorry reproach — “gee, you knew what you were getting into, so how could you be so plaintive [read: such a whiner]” is just weak. She could be aware and unhappy, you know.

That’s like telling PhD candidates who don’t get a tenure track job “oh, you knew the market for [literature, history, anthro, whatever] candidates was historically small — you chose to do the degree, so now lump it as an adjunct". Yeah, that’s the way to show solidarity among faculty.

Further, there is no good reason why PP “ought” to have spent her blog discussing “all” the fine students at SMU. Even if she chose to focus on a subpart of the student body — so what? Does she have to be “representative” in her private ramblings on the students she’s encountered? If so, why?

Since you seem to have trouble with logic, I’ll spell out a metaphor: does Toni Morrison only need to populate her novels with “good” black characters? (Hint: the answer lies in the novels themselves.) Or can she talk about people — even, let’s say, a group of people — who might not be the “good” representatives of their kind?

Finally, your “conclusion” — that PP chose to portray a set of students in order to enhance the “fictional", and hence “marketable", nature of her writing is just a leap into air. Now, I’m not saying it isn’t the case; I can’t say. But where do you find evidence for that? Perhaps because she has a book contract? But is that clearly causally related to the characterization she made? It seems she had genuine, deeply felt convictions about the Ashleys and their mores, lifestyle, and values. Do you know for sure that this made her bound and determined to publish a book about them?

Of course, even if the answer is yes: so what? Students are so sacrosanct that they can’t be mocked, even as groups? What is your position on all the authors (some of whom I have cited above) who mock academia, including students of various sub-groups? They have given their hearts and souls in the keeping of Jane Smiley? Hmm. I’m sure she would be devastated to hear that “Moo” violates their rights and their very selves. Please.

It’s hard for me to believe that you haven’t had ample opportunity to have this exchange outright with PP. At the least, I would hope you’ve made your rancorous “open letter” known to PP, its target.

Tiger, at 11:16 pm EDT on May 16, 2005

Good afternoon. My name is MM, and I am a South Carolina-native and rising senior at SMU. My major is English, and I have a double-minor in Journalism and CCPA — thus, I have much more reason to post a comment than those who’ve no contact with SMU or even Elaine’s department. I’m not going to attack Prof. Liner, because, as a product of the SMU journalism school (from which I have worked for over a year writing for the Dallas Morning News) I have learned not to attack the writer — but to attack the subject-matter to prove your point. As I said I’m from South Carolina. I’m a white, blue-eyed, normal college-guy with brown hair. My father makes more than $375K a year and I drive a 1999 GMC Denali. I attended a wealthy, private, Virginia boarding school that’s predominately white. My father could easily afford to send me to SMU. But he doesn’t pay for me to go here — SMU does, because I, as nearly all SMU students do, value a meritocratic life. Elaine Liner doesn’t bother me as a person, she bothers me because she overlooks those who fall outside her perceived — yet stereotypical and jaw-droppingly skewed — SMU norm. I’m rich and white, but I write for the DMN, am a part-time lifeguard at the local YMCA, and am a research assistant for a CCPA professor who’ll be leaving in July to take on a job at UGA. (By the way, Dr. Wideas asked me to be her research assistant for next year. I declined because I’m taking 18 hours next fall, including a class that will allow me to graduate with distinction in English from SMU, not because Dr. Wideas is black or pleasantly plump. As a matter of fact, I think she’s awesome). Continuing to dispel the SMU-myths, I don’t have a credit card. I’m an Eagle Scout. I worked for CNN in Boston at the Democratic National Convention (yes, SMU students care about politics). I am a staff writer and was a weekly columnist for SMU’s Daily Campus. Instead of throwing myself a twenty-first birthday party, I convinced my father to pay for an LSAT Kaplan course. I’m not saying I’m a Saint or am trying to make myself out to be a martyr. I’m neither — and will refuse anyone who even tried to say I was. However, I am rich, white, a member of a fraternity, and I drive a nice car — but I don’t think of myself as better than my professors — adjunct or tenured — becaue I’m inherently wealthier. (Speaking of that, you can’t blame a person for their father’s work habits. My father put himself through college, bought his own first car, and built his own wealth. Do I think you’re persecuting the rich by regurgitating the trite “silver spoon” line? No, that’s silly. But I would call you ignorant and unable to grasp the capitalistic reality in which we exist). I’ve had the commentors Jrich and Kathy (both outstanding SMU professors). I made an A in both their classes this semester — not because they’re easy, but because they convince their students to work hard for themselves. That’s what great teachers do — that’s what my SMU teachers do. SMU is not a place to coast towards your degree, nor is it a playground for the faint-hearted. It’s a devilishly competitive educational arena that says if you want to be the best, you damned well better bust your ass. Sometimes, I’ve dreamt of certain professors’ untimely demise right during midterm or final exam week, both of which forced me to endure several all-nighters in a seven-day span. What I’m trying to say is that Liner’s comments aren’t accurate. I work my ass off to be here because I like working my ass off — and there are hundreds of other kids just like me. I don’t care about Elaine Liner, because I know she’s wrong. I don’t care about her intentions. All I care about is to show you that in a country where free speech is paramount, I can easily define and negate Liner’s statements.Be this what it may, if you made it this far, I doff my cap to you, kind fellow. But keep in mind, writing blogs doesn’t automatically make the content right.

Male SMU Undergrad, Garbled Masses at SMU, at 1:07 pm EDT on May 17, 2005

To the SMU students and professors

Personally, I found the Phantom Professor’s blog well-written and very entertaining. I can understand how knowing for certain that a professor has negative thoughts about a student or fellow professor would be hurtful and/or uncomfortable. But here’s the deal. The PP was blowing off steam about her own situation and experiences. We all do this everyday with our friends and family.

Most of the time, those people you complain about, make fun of, admire, and hate, usually don’t know your true feelings because you often say them behind peoples’ backs. As hard as it is to look at yourself from someone else’s point of view, it is thes