The self demands promotion

-In the New Republic, I argue that professors shouldn't blog negatively about students, reacting to Conor Friedersdorf's piece and several others. I'd written in the past about instructors who make fun of their students online - the hilarious-error genre that will be familiar to you if you have friends who teach. While student mistakes can be the stuff of great comedy, it screws up the teaching environment if students who mess up risk not only low grades but mockery from the people supposedly helping them learn.

The case I talk about in this article is different - a tenured professor, John McAdams called out a grad student for a classroom-management decision she'd made. Because she wasn't his student, and because the behavior he was criticizing was her instruction of undergrads, he seemed to think he could take her on as a fellow college instructor, or as an investigative journalist, or as some bizarre hybrid.

-And for a video of me chatting with Aryeh Cohen-Wade about viral shaming, European Jews, and the "cool girl," click here.