Auchtoon!Michigan State Professor Windbag…
Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
September 15, 2013
So a professor at Michigan State University, William Penn, went off on a rant in a class he was teaching. Apparently Professor Penn has some very specific opinions about Republicans and felt compelled to share them in his Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities class (re: not actually the topic). We know this because one of the students took a video and posted it. Trouble ensued. Click here for the complete story.
I had a metallurgy professor in college who would occasionally take five minutes during a lecture to tell us a story that had nothing to do with metallurgy. He’d share his thoughts about this or that or tell us a story about growing up on a farm. It was wonderful. So I’m not fundamentally opposed to the off-topic aside. But I have also been trapped in rooms where people feel entitled to tell you exactly what they think and do so because, well, they can. That, too, happened to me in college. But it didn’t stop happening there. (Cue Dilbert.)
So I’m sure that it sucked having to listen to Professor Penn go on and on, but it was in fact a pretty good life lesson. And I would give the student who thought to record and share the rant an “A” for doing something about it.
Kris said,
September 17, 2013 @ 9:29 am
So true! And once you’ve been in the workforce a while, it’s listening to new execs excitedly proclaim their scathingly brilliant idea that is neither original nor plausible. Prof Penn looks to have a decent CV but sounds like he’s been in the ivory tower too long.