If You Can’t Beat ’em, Sue ’em

Last week, a few students in the Dartmouth writing class “Science, Technology, and Society” received a nasty shock. When they checked their inboxes, they learned that their professor, Priya Venkatesan, was planning to sue them for discrimination. Later investigations revealed that she also planned to sue the College and several faculty members, not referring to any particular episode, but mentioning the “hostility” she felt during her time as a professor and saying that “maybe it has something to do with my ethnicity or my gender.”

Although the case as a whole is absurd, the most bizarre aspect is the pure unprofessionalism with which Venkatesan handled the situation. By e-mailing students directly, without going through a lawyer or the university, she produced unnecessary stress and confusion for students. The content of her pre-litigious messages is also dubious: She accused them of violating “anti-federal discrimination laws” under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, gender, religion, or national origin. Putting aside the bad grammar of her e-mail, it is unclear what she meant by this, as she cites no specific incident in which such discrimination was evident. It’s true that Venkatesan’s students may not have liked her, but this was likely due to what they perceived as poor teaching, unfair grading policies, and erratic behavior—not, as she claims, to her status as an Indian-American woman.

Her e-mails also say that she “is writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will ‘name names’ so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.” For Venkatesan to point fingers at individuals using supposedly confidential student feedback is not only morally reprehensible, it also hurts her own cause by creating the perception that she is simply capitalizing on her fifteen minutes of fame.

Venkatesan has shown signs of irrational behavior in the past, once cancelling class for a week after her class applauded a student who voiced views on postmodernism opposing her own. Venkatesan defended the move by saying that, “My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line … I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression.” But cancelling class does in fact mean stifling her students’ views and depriving them of an environment for productive classroom discourse. Accusing her students of a misdeed for which she herself is responsible —“intolerance of freedom of expression”—is simply a case of the pot calling the kettle black. And her willingness to take her grievances to court poses a dangerous precedent. To use classroom dialogue as grounds for litigation threatens to chill free discourse within the classroom, stifling the intellectual exchange that is paramount to education.

Whether or not Venkatesan has grounds for her case, the situation has troubling implications. The litigious threats are among a recent spate of well-publicized incidents in which conflicts that have failed to find mediation in the classroom have spilled into other realms, like the Internet or the courthouse. Like the Horace Mann case, featuring vicious Facebook groups aimed at high school teachers, Venkatesan’s move to a lawsuit and book deal represent a failure of reconciliation within the classroom. Student-teacher arguments are nothing new, of course, but these escalated clashes still suggest a lack of mutual respect and an inability to resolve disagreements amicably. Venkatesan would have done well to bring her grievances to a university administrator before searching for an attorney.

It’s possible, of course, that we don’t have the full story. Perhaps more happened in that classroom than the news stories report; the whole affair is clouded by confusion and eccentricity. But as things stand now, it’s no surprise that Venkatesan has had trouble finding a lawyer: Her arguments seem groundless. Venkatesan has flip-flopped a number of times about whether or not she will drop the case, but as this issue goes to press, she still plans to sue and to write her autobiography. To do so would be unfair to students, and would only turn any of her potentially legitimate concerns into the worst kind of farce.