Wed 30 Nov 2005
This New York Times article isn’t about EphBlog.
There is no excuse for the poor judgment of the busted, but it is intriguing how an overdose of college fanaticism has created a strain of voyeurs who have morphed into Internet nannies, gaining more empowerment with every miscreant they take down.
Their blogs, e-mail messages and downloads have permanence because a tip can be delivered straight to the top of athletic departments and universities under the mask of anonymity.
But it could have been.
By the way, every Eph’s favorite racist, Aida Laleian is on-leave for 2005-2006, relaxing and rejuvenating herself for future Art Department meetings. Your tuition dollars at work.
But surely the College has learned something from the experience. Surely some committee was formed to investigate how someone like Laleian was hired by Williams and how she was tenured. Surely the idiots folks who made those decisions have been called to account. Surely they are not the same folks in charge of hiring and tenuring the next round of faculty hires. Surely someone is asking questions about a process which seems to result in a lot of faculty jobs going to the spouses/partner of current faculty. (Or didn’t you know that Laleian is married to Art Professor Steve Levin?)
Surely someone in authority will tell concerned alumni about how all this happened.
Ha! That will be the day . . .
The article ends with
This moment of unsolicited fame for Kyle will pass quickly. Soon, another snapshot of collegiate ignobility is bound to land as a pop-up on the Internet.
Who is the next target? Just log on to find out.
Indeed. Have we told you the one about the Eph porn star yet? Stay tuned.
November 30th, 2005 at 7:37 am
Kane,
Are you just trying to validate the opinions of the first poster under ‘Ravishing’?
Btw, you yourself have yourself advocated for the hiring of spouses of faculty members.
http://www.ephblog.com/2004/01/22/Salary-Foolishness/
http://www.ephblog.com/2005/05/13/Nationwide-Search/
Let’s see you try to wiggle out of this one (let me guess- you will claim there is a difference between hiring faculty couples and hiring the spouse of a current faculty member. Honestly, it’s amazing how finely you’re willing to make distinctions when others make points, but how broad a brush you use when making your own).
November 30th, 2005 at 7:46 am
I have argued before that, all else equal, hiring faculty couples is a good idea. This applies both to couples coming to Williams for the first time and to the spouse of a current faculty member (although the former case seems more likely to be an “objective” one.)
But I could be wrong about this. Perhaps hiring spouses is often a mistake, as the case of Laleian demonstrates. I don’t know. My guess is that, net/net, Williams still comes out ahead. It is an empirical question.
My point, which seems obvious enough, is that a well-run organization investigates its mistakes and reports on the results of those investigations, at least internally. Does anyone doubt that the hiring and tenuring of Laleian was a mistake? Given this, the question is whether or not anything different should be done in the future.
November 30th, 2005 at 8:20 am
As a spousal hire myself, I should speak in favor of the practice. Spousal hires are a necessity for Williams if it wants to attract top flight professors. Many academics marry other academics and finding jobs in the same geographic location is a huge challenge. A school that offers the spouse a job is far more desirable than a single job offer. And once a couple lands jobs together, then it is very difficult to leave because another school would presumably have to hire both members of the couple. Thus, spousal hires provide for more stability in the faculty (which benefits the college in numerous ways). The geographic isolation of Williams further reinforces the need to make spousal hires.
Of course, some quality control is necessary. The college should not hire unqualified individuals or people who would make very bad colleagues. Some times it is not always obvious at the time of the hire how good a professor the spouse will be. I’m sure everyone at the faculty meeting was surprised and shocked at Laleian’s use of a racial epithet (and, in all fairness, perhaps it was just a one-off outburst, I’ve never met her and have no way of putting the incident in a broader context).
November 30th, 2005 at 9:28 am
This “geographic isolation” that seems to plague Williams arises in every other Ephblog thread.
Am I the only one who doesn’t actually think that Williams is all that isolated? If faculty hate Williamstown, can’t they just live in Albany and commute? Boston and New York, though not an easy commute every day, are less than 3 hours from Billsville. For the faculty teaching Tuesday and Thursday classes, a three day stayover in Billsville each week of the semester seems doable. Can’t faculty spouses find work in the Albany area, the 5-colleges area etc..
My father commutes 1.5 hours each way, every day, and has been doing this as long as I can remember. We also live in a region with far more inclement weather than Billsville, and he manages to commute in even the most abyssmal winter conditions.
Many of my colleagues here in City X commute well over an hour each way, and I never hear any complaints from them.
November 30th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Mike,
In my days, there were a few faculty members who had spouses with jobs in the five college area. There were also faculty members with spouses who worked in areas far away. And an hour’s commute is workable I suppose, but there aren’t that many faculty slots available within an hour’s drive of Billsville. The bottom-line is that if Williams doesn’t hire your spouse, either your spouse stops working or one of you has a long commute (and one of the attractions of Williamstown is that big city commutes are unnecessary).
As for the Tuesday-Thursday schedule, it isn’t optimal for anyone involved. The college would like to have the faculty member around more than three days a week to research, attend talks, committee meetings, meet with students, and generally be collegial. The spouse of the commuting faculty member can’t be psyched to be alone three out of four nights a week. And as pleasant as the drive to and from Williams is (I miss careening around the Berkshires), those hours spent going back and forth could be spent researching, attending to a hobby, or spending time with children.
It’s not that it is impossible, but it is sub-optimal and the faculty member might be looking for a better arrangement at another school. Schools in bigger cities have an advantage because there is more interesting work for spouses of either sex — both academic and commercial (and government, I suppose).
November 30th, 2005 at 11:32 am
For the love of God, have some discretion.
November 30th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
Lest Kane engage in his educated guess methodology for determination of the porn star’s true identity, I will head him off at the pass by eliminating myself as a candidate. Resemblance to any of the actors in “Logjammin” is purely coincidental.
November 30th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
Jeff Zeeman, ladies and gentlemen!
Well done.
November 30th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Fine, I’ll ask the obvious followup question: other than the outburst, do you have any evidence that Professor Laleian is underqualified to be at Williams? And hell, having not been there, do you have any evidence that her outburst was truly immoral, rather than simply inappropriate in the context of Williams College?
November 30th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
there’s a Williams pr0n star? SWeet!!!
link to the video, por favour.
November 30th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
Weeell, she did star in a porn movie available publicly on the web. I’m not sure anyone else has a duty to be discreet about her.
November 30th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Refraining from posting the link on EphBlog was, I would think, an act of discretion.
November 30th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Kane, you’d better watch out….one of these days you might get sued in England.
http://www.postchronicle.com/news/entertainment/article_2121343.shtml
November 30th, 2005 at 7:28 pm
Knowing D. Kane’s tendencies, should it surprise you that he’s just waiting for the most opportune moment?
True, but I’m sure that she didn’t intend for the entire eph community to see it.
November 30th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
Good for her!!!!!!
Exactly what is wrong with making or “acting” in a porno?
A friend of mine recently returned from the Galapagos islands, where a rare species of tortoises weren’t mating. I may be mucking up this story a bit, but, according to her, the underlying cause of this procreative drought was the fact that the male tortoises didn’t know how to mate. The introduction of a captive male tortoise spurred a veritable tortoise sex jam. Scientists speculate that this “studly” captive tortoise showed the other male tortoises how to become intimate with the female tortoises.
Is it possible that porn stars can serve as our tortoises?
November 30th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
You act like porn is shameful or something. I wouldn’t mind David posting on Ephblog about my summer job (it wasn’t porn).
December 1st, 2005 at 12:54 am
Have you seen the actual clip, Ronit?
December 1st, 2005 at 8:24 am
Yes, David R, everyone has seen the clip.
December 1st, 2005 at 11:28 am
was it as good for you as it was for her?
I feel these are interesting comments, in a couple directions.
1) does MikeyD223 really think that instructional panda porn is really what is at issue, here? I’m not sure what contemporary, hard-core, pornography has to do with reproductive functions, not least because so little of it is focused on intercourse that could ever be generative.
2) does David R really want to see the video? I have the link, if anyone wants it.
3) I think starring in pornography is a bad decision, personally and professionally. I think video of sex acts just adds to complications in the future, especially with future lovers and employers. Google’s not just for comp sci geeks, anymore.
December 1st, 2005 at 4:38 pm
I think all of you are missing the point of my question. Yes, I’ve seen the video. If you’ve seen the video, you’ll understand why I asked Ronit if he’s seen it after he said
I would’ve hoped that my fellow Williams students would be better at picking up innuendo.
December 1st, 2005 at 6:39 pm
I think I may be the only person who hasn’t seen the video, so perhaps I lack the proper perspective to really add to this discussion, but it seems to me that the real issue here is that there is only one porn star at Williams. That clearly indicates that admissions has an unjustified porn star quota.
December 1st, 2005 at 7:02 pm
You guys are missing the point on what MikeyD223 said. Let’s answer the question, okay?
No, Mikey, it’s not. Hardcore porn sites will never show men or women how to be intimate with each other. Intimacy is about love and emotional connection, whereas by definition, hardcore porn is about the physical act itself, the insertion of an organ into another, the physical and emotional domination of one person over another. No, this is not a model that Williams needs.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:17 pm
But is it possible that hardcore porn can show us alternate ways of expressing love and emotion? Perhaps new, interesting, exciting sexual techniques?
Hardcore porn doesn’t necessarily have to be about physical and emotional domination of one person over another person. Anyway, this young woman’s decision to “act” in the porno was her decision, and I really hope that the Williams students treat her respectfully- even if they disagree with her actions.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Diana,
Back to the Department of Rhetoric, those classic purveyors of one-thing-as-another:
I’m not sure Linda ever said that at the end. Taken from The Boston Glob. Linda and I don’t really get along, else I’d ask her, but the above seems a fairly glib reporting of views that are rather different.
On the other side, the first pages of her 1989 Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible are available for reading online at Amazon. The language there indicates a different historical period and caution in thinking about pornography– not to mention is rather mired in middle-class white American academic perspectives– but is much more filled with Linda’s concerns to explore what hard-core pornography does, literarily speaking.
The above work also contains such jewels in its first pages as:
whose unapologetic ideological blindness speaks for itself and for its speakers’ inability to imagine sexuality outside such ideological bounds.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:58 pm
I believe even Jenna Jameson has made this clear: living within an economically, psychologically and physically exploitative– and more-than-potentially abusive– “industry.” The sweet “panda” analogy breaks down when you consider the perspectives of most women who used to work in the pornography industry. Whether the current industry is truly different…
December 2nd, 2005 at 8:57 pm
Ken: I hardly think this Williams undergrad, doing something of her own free choice, is “living within…and exploitative industry.” I doubt it’s her career, and would be most surprise if she was forced to do this through economic necessity. Williams students shouldn’t have a hard time securing conventional work study or summer jobs.
December 2nd, 2005 at 8:58 pm
gah. I fail at proofreading.