The university should look into whether any male students have been discriminated against
If you are a man, you’ll probably want to avoid Suzanna Walters’ sociology classes at Northeastern University. The academic, who also heads up the school’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program, hates men. She has confessed as much—and in the pages of The Washington Post, no less. “[I]t seems logical to hate men,” Walters wrote, citing off a list of hate-inducing factors like “mansplaining” and “the deadening banality of male prerogative.” By these measures, women should hate men. Ladies: Your husbands, your boyfriends, your fathers, your friends—go ahead, hate them all. A women’s studies expert says it’s logical for you to do so!
It goes without saying that, were the target of Walters’ ire any other demographic—women, or racial minorities, or gay people, or immigrants—she would be drummed out of the academy within twelve hours of the article’s publication, and understandably so. Aside from being simply rotten morals, hating a particular target group is uniquely incompatible with the demands of professorship. Instructors must be willing to treat all of their students wholly as equals, and not view them through a prism of bitter, illogical revenge politics. One is obliged to give professors the benefit of the doubt, of course—but when an instructor openly states her abject loathing of one half of the student body, it’s not unreasonable to assume that she might have some issues with teaching men.
Northeastern responded to Walters’ deeply incorrect essay by firmly stating that “hate has no place” at the university. It also, justifiably, cited an “unwavering commitment to academic freedom,” indicating that it has no intention to punish Walters for her self-professed abhorrence of 50% of her students. Good: Academic freedom is a critical and necessary part of proper scholarship. But the university is obliged to investigate whether Walters, who is an admitted and proud bigot, has actually discriminated against any of her male students. To do any less would be to potentially give sanction to serious and inexcusable prejudice. Bigoted ideas, bad as they are, should not carry administrative consequences; bigoted actions are another thing entirely.
MORE: ‘Hate has no place here’: University responds to prof’s call to hate men
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