On Sleeping with One's Students

The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.--Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments

[Professor Jane Gallop] draws on her own experience of sleeping with two professors on her dissertation committee to suggest that students, rather than being automatically debased and demeaned by such relationships, can "feel powerful because they seduced their teachers". Contrary to the image of the lecherous professor, she notes, it is usually students who initiate sexual advances.

Her one-night stands with the two men, she writes, intensified her desire to learn and her desire to excel. "I desired and I ****ed my teachers. And they taught and challenged me, criticised and praised me; they let me see them as men and never stopped taking me seriously as a student. I felt that in their eyes I was both a desirable woman and a serious scholar."--The Times Higher Education [HT Petra Van Brabandt]

A sub-set of my European friends, male and female, tend to view concern over sexual harassment as instances of American Puritanism. The feminists among these share Professor Gallop's sense that acting on desire can be empowering and can motivate the further desire to "learn and excel." As a fact about moral psychology this is undeniably so. And it is also undeniably so that a classroom without hunger for knowledge and eagerness to learn is no better (and, perhaps, worse) than a receipt's office of a state bureaucracy.

Let's stipulate, first, that Professor Gallop's seduced professors did see her as "a desirable woman and a serious scholar." But by acting on her desire, and their own, they also opened the door to changing the nature of their relationship. The scholarly and professional gifts they were bestowing on (the future) professor Gallop now also include a sexual transaction. One of their gifts in their transactions with her is, in fact, allowing her to see herself as initiator. That is a gift the more powerful can bestow on the less powerful in any transaction.*

Now, sexual transactions are certainly a means by which the less powerful can advance their cause(s). But unless we must assume contrary the history of mankind that the powerful are more virtuous, more generous, and more disinterested than the rest of us, the powerful must also assume that entering into such a transaction with the powerless enhances their power. And, in fact, Prof. Gallop seems aware of this when she claims that  "Under the guise of despising sexual harassment, we find ourselves once again vilifying women who presume to be sexual and powerful like men." The point is not merely that to act on desire remains gendered male here, but also that acting on such desire reinforces their system of power. 

We should not overstate the power that professors have in a university in the modern administrative state. But bestowing gifts to the favored is their main way of exercising it. The more gifts you can give or appear to give, the more powerful you are. The most valuable gift in the political economy of higher learning -- time is the scarce resource -- is attention to one's work. This flatters the vanity of the powerless, and may, in fact, enhance their careers. But again assuming that academic professors are only human (I have some introspective confirmation of this), their judgments of quality may also be subtly corrupted when they let these be influenced by sexual transactions with the less powerful.

It may be the case that that there is a plausible argument that female professors should be allowed more freedom to engage their students sexually than their male counterparts (perhaps this is to be found in prof. Gallop's book). But, bystanders, including especially other less powerful ones, who may well feel that that work is now being overlooked, will assume that the judgments of the powerul are being corrupted. And there is no argument that in virtue of belonging to an oppressed category, a powerful women's judgment cannot be corrupted. That is to say, while some relatively powerless may well benefit in all kinds of intellectually enhancing ways by way of sexual transactions with a professor, such relationships can generate a terrible workplace environment full of jealousy and questioning of judgments.**

So, what is to be done? Villifying desires of the young and old is obviously bad. This may, in fact, prevent a healthy self-development and discovery.  But we don't need to be Platonists, to recognize that skilled teachers can also re-orient desires toward other objects that may be as noble and beautiful as ourselves. As I have reported, I discovered the art of sublimation, in this fashion. Undoubtedly, there are other approaches; how to manage such re-orientation in a playful fashion in a teaching environment is, in fact, the secret to the art of teaching, which I have found remains itself an experiment in self-discovery. I find this among the hardest parts of teaching (recall). But often self-restraint is the best gift we can give to others, and ourselves; it also provides (perhaps by way of self-deception over one's motives) more enduring self-satisfaction.

 

*This is why her claim that "it is usually students who initiate sexual advances" is worthless. Leaving aside the epistemic problems involved in such judgments, the form of morality presupposed is appropriate only to a playground fight ('they started').  For the powerful this meme is the classic means to be absolved of any responsibility.

** I am drawing on a recent, fruitful facebook discussion.

Comments

[Julie Klein]

I have not read Gallop's book with Duke, but it certainly looks like she's gone way off the deep end. Self-justification, anyone?