Relationships with Students
Slate’s Rebecca Schuman reports on recent discussions in the philosophical community on relations between professors and students. Several philosophers were interviewed for the article, including Carla Fehr (Waterloo), Meena Krishnamurthy (Manitoba), Rachel McKinnon (College of Charleston), and Eric Wiland (University of Missouri–St. Louis).
Given recent events, one would think that this would be an important topic that people would be eager to discuss and get clear about: what institutional and/or personal policies are appropriate when it comes to amorous relations between professors and students? But here is one of the most highly read philosophy blogs with a post entitled “Relationships with Students”, and so far nobody is touching it with a ten-foot pole, not even anonymously or pseudonymously. (Obviously I am posting under a pseudonym, and I’m barely touching on the real topic at hand.)
It could be that folks are leaving comments instead at the Slate site, but another possibility is that between this thread on relations between professors and their students, and this thread about amorous relations between philosophers in professional contexts, people are a bit tapped out. More discussion is welcome, of course.
I think people are tapped out, and also, nothing in the Slate article was new to philosophers that follow blogs. Also, I volunteered to comment for the article, Schuman acknowledged it, but never contacted me for comment. Which I interpreted as, she had too many people willing to comment.
Justin Weinberg… Thanks for referring me to those other discussions: I’m newish to this blog and missed them. Kristina Meshelski, yeah, maybe a certain issue fatigue ha set in.