What An Asshole

Yesterday’s jerk du jour, Emory professor Mark Bauerlein, who wrote an op-ed shaming other professors for not turning on their students to idolize them and discover how real learning happens outside the classroom (and frankly using the type of language that reminds one of a professor justifying sex with students), doubles down today. LD Burnett wrote a response at the U.S. Intellectual History blog. She ended her essay by writing “That ain’t right Bauerlein.” His response:

Finally, I note that you are a graduate student. May I offer you some counsel. It is certainly the case that popular intellectual discourse has slipped into banter and smartalecky-ness. It’s a way of getting noticed, and people take pleasure in cheap shots. We have to accept that in headlines and book titles (like one of my own). But once we get into the meat, you should leave the pseudo-witticisms behind (“du jour,” “ain’t,” . . . and Bloom’s book was not “breathless”). Knowingness is not wisdom They detract from a serious argument, and only level you with the mob of scribbling women and men.

In response, let me throw out a big “fuck you” to Bauerlein. I mean, I know I am only a lowly assistant professor and all so perhaps I should take counsel from the lordly Mark Bauerlein. Personally, I’d take 100 ain’ts over riffing off Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sexist comments about mobs of scribbling women and condescension toward graduate students daring to write in public. I ain’t in no mood to put up with this kind of garbage at all.