The Hungry Artist

I had put off reading my student evaluations from winter term this year, for a few weeks, not for any particular reason, and now I wish I hadn’t. You see, for the first time in all my years of teaching, a student marked me as a “1” out of 5 in every category and made wild and false accusations against me. The gist of their remarks was that as “incredibly liberal,” I had pushed my political views on to them and enjoyed ripping on Trump and right-wing believers. This student went on to accuse me of spending most of class yelling about how stupid Trump is and forcing them to read an essay that claims that Adam and Eve were transgender. Granted, some of the lessons in this research-paper focused class revolved around exploring the most current news; for example, one in-class assignment called for students in their groups to go online, find a news story reported by two different media, and analyze the similarities and differences in their reporting. And considering that winter term was when Trump was inaugurated and started off his second term with a slew of executive orders, including the firing of federal employees and enforcing tariffs on Canada, just about every news site’s front page was all about Trump. Maybe my views (as liberal-leaning) seeped in, but I know for certain I didn’t spend an entire class period yelling about how stupid Trump is (even though I do believe this). The student made it sound like I was hysterical and let my emotions get way out of control, “after all that he has done for our country.” Why am I rehashing my experience? My initial reaction was to feel anger, but also sadness, and fear of what these false accusations might mean for my position. You see, I recently applied for a tenure-track position at Clark College, where this happened. I needed to know if student evaluations are taken into consideration in the college’s hiring practices. So I decided to reach out to the chair of our department and the adjunct coordinator. They were, as I expected, very understanding, and both reassured me that they do not take student evaluations into account at all in hiring, and they both saw this student rant as an outlier. Clearly, this student had an axe to grind. I couldn’t help but wonder who it was: The student who failed the class? Someone who is ultra-right wing (the demographic at this college does include these types). I even started to doubt myself–had I made it too obvious, whether in tone of voice, facial expression, etc., my political beliefs? In these terrible times where the Trump administration is attacking liberal Democracy including the right to free speech and academia at large, what are liberal professors to do? Ought we walk on pins and needles, silence ourselves? The chair pointed out that sometimes students take critical debate as an attack on their belief systems. One way to address that is to point out two of the learning objectives: critical thinking and evaluating sources can help students to see the class work as focused on more objective skill-building, rather than subjective disagreement. Point well taken. But I can’t help agree with my brother who said that these kinds of comments and attacks from the right are inevitable in these times and that the right is loud and obnoxious but play the victim when liberals express their views; he believes that in general the left are timid and the right takes advantage of that. I agree that in the US right now, the right is ever more emboldened to do what they’re doing: trolling pro-Palestinian students, liberal teachers, anyone who doesn’t bow to their god/king. I realize that my experience is tiny compared to the awful violation of human rights taking place with students like Khalil and the Turkish student being held in an ICE detention center. I can’t even imagine going through the hell they’re going through, and I am angry and frightened as so many of my friends are. I see this begrudged student’s attacks on me as bigger than me, it reflects a growing illiberal trend. Have any of you, dear fellow-academics/teachers experienced anything similar to what I have? Or do you know of anyone who has? What are your views? Do you think things will only get worse?