It must be a slow news day when a Daily Orange cover story is about an email circulated by a small handful of disgruntled students complaining about a professor they don’t like. Normally I’d ignore it. But since the professor in question is a colleague and friend of mine, and because I believe students have acted dishonorably, I am compelled to respond.

I was a member of the Asian-American literature search committee, which professor Susan Edmunds chaired, even though she was supposed to be on research leave. In that role, she did more work for the search than anyone.  She was also the most knowledgeable person on the committee regarding the field. The notion that she is unqualified to teach in this area is absurd, and the fact that this charge is coming from undergraduates (who really are unqualified to teach college courses, not to mention hire new faculty) might be laughable if it weren’t so mean-spirited. 

Edmunds’ classroom was anonymously blanketed with pamphlets protesting her qualifications. That’s not activism. It’s the cowardly harassment of an individual.  The student group Asian Students in America has both denied responsibility for the act and said it sees nothing wrong with it, which is what I call having your cake and avoiding a disciplinary hearing, too. ASIA wants everyone to see them as radical student activists, but in fact they have acted more like cyberbullies, and not very effective ones at that. Their online petition has been up since January, yet has only 159 signatures. I had more Facebook friends wish me a happy birthday this year.  

It’s true that ethnic studies was born out of student activism during the civil rights era, but it didn’t look like this. Those students didn’t demand to sit on hiring committees or assess faculty qualifications. They protested racism, classism, sexism, imperialism, militarism and the Vietnam War. The United States is now fighting three wars. It would be nice to see some student protests — and D.O. coverage — of that.

Scott Lyons

Associate Professor of English

Director, Native American Studies

 

Published on April 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm