Prostitution skit raises questions about academic freedom

BOULDER, Colo. — Patti Adler laughed throughout her first lecture of the spring semester, sometimes along with students, sometimes nervously.

“I’m so nervous,” she told some 400 University of Colorado at Boulder students at the beginning of her sociology class, Deviance in U.S. Society. “I’ve had a really rough last few weeks.”

The skit in question features former undergraduate students now serving as assistant teaching assistants in Adler’s popular deviance class. They portray different types of sex workers, from, as she put it, “crack whores” to escorts.

The idea is to illustrate differences in family, educational and economic backgrounds, how different types of sex workers arrived at the occupation and even the risks of violence they face.

Males and females are included in the performance, and student assistants aren’t required to participate, but many are eager to perform.

“It’s completely optional,” she said. “People fight to get into this skit. It’s a big opportunity.”

But apparently before the skit was performed, someone complained about the possibility that students might feel forced to perform. Adler said she believed the complainant was one of her graduate teaching assistants who wasn’t involved in the skit.

“Instead of coming to me and discussing her concern with me, she went to the department chair with her concerns,” Adler said.

Administrators, however, said they heard from “a number of concerned students” in one email. CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said the issue centered on protecting the “safety and well-being” of teaching assistants who might feel pressured to perform in the skit.

“This was never about the content of what was being taught,” he said. “This was not about teaching about prostitution. This was not in general about role-playing.”

But he wouldn’t say how many complaints were filed or by whom. Many of Adler’s former students formed a Facebook group, now closed, to defend her.

Investigators from CU’s discrimination and harassment office apparently attended the early-November skit without Adler’s knowledge. At a December meeting with the arts and sciences dean and others, she was told she wouldn’t be teaching the class this spring and was offered the early retirement deal — a deal she said administrators rejected when she asked for it earlier in the fall.

Until that point, she said, she was unaware of any complaints about her class. But she noted that administrators mentioned the need for caution in the year after the Penn State sexual-assault scandal.

Adler said she isn’t sure whether the skit will be part of this semester’s class.

“Anything that you can bring into a class that’s experiential education is going to be so much more memorable and better pedagogy,” she said. “But people are fearful of censorship. People are fearful of this ultra–political correctness taken to extremes that anything could be offensive.”

The action against Adler, including an email from CU Provost Russell Moore noting that academic freedom doesn’t allow faculty members to violate sexual-harassment policies, drew plenty of criticism from academic and free-speech groups.

In a Jan. 2 letter to CU administrators, four organizations noted the chilling effect that an overly broad interpretation of sexual harassment could have on academic freedom and free speech.

“They’re overextending it to things that are not harassing but that people don’t like,” said Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Part of that overreaction may be the result of a letter sent in May by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education to the University of Montana in connection with a case of student sex assault and harassment. Bertin and others said the letter called for a “blueprint” for all higher-education institutions that might render a lecture on Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” or Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” as sexual harassment.

“You can’t be opening investigations of people just based on the fact that they use sexuality in their curriculum,” said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, a co-signer of the Jan. 2 letter. “There’s this sense of sort of a policing of harassment on campus that has defined itself down to anything that anyone finds the least bit unpleasant or disagreeable to listen to.”

He cited a recent case at the University of Kansas in which a journalism professor was suspended for a tweet insulting the National Rifle Association after the Washington Navy Yard shootings. The school’s regents adopted a social-media policy in December allowing termination for improper postings, ranging from inciting violence to being “contrary to the best interest of the university.”

“Administrators generally are bending on the side of being more punitive than they otherwise would be in cases where there is some evidence of a faculty member going too far,” said Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars. “In cases where the evidence is thin, since the rules specify a pretty strong presumption of guilt, they’re acting quickly and apologizing afterwards if they have to.”

Hilliard, however, said Boulder’s sensitivity to potential sexual harassment stems in part from a Title IX lawsuit that the university settled after allegations of rape by football players.

“It’s important to realize that sexual harassment or creating a hostile work environment … are matters of law,” he said. “This is an issue of balancing academic freedom in the pursuit of knowledge and information and the rights of students, student teaching assistants and graduate teaching assistants … We’re not putting forth any notion that people need to walk on eggs.”

A few days after the controversy came to light in mid-December, CU administrators announced Adler would be allowed to teach the class this spring, pending a review and approval by other sociology professors.

A week and a half before classes began, the university announced that she would teach the class but no apology for the brouhaha would be issued.

Adler told her class Tuesday it was the first time she’d used PowerPoint to guide her opening lecture. During the course of 50 minutes, she brought up Brazilian waxes, penile enhancement, treatment of the homeless and, yes, prostitution in discussing deviance, norms and taboos.

One of her slides read, “Ratings advisory: Warning to people who are sensitive.”

“This class has been rated R by the Office of Discrimination and Harassment,” she told the auditorium. “We will be discussing topics that are sensitive. We will be discussing drugs, sex. We have a whole class on rape, violence against women, prostitution.”

She said that students uncomfortable with particular topics should talk with her about it, adding, “Goddamn, where did the role of fun go?”

As class ended, a line of students went forward to talk with Adler.

“I’m really excited to take your class,” said one young woman. “Don’t let the system get you down.”