UC Ban on Faculty-Student Relationships an 'Unethical Intrusion into Private Lives'

Cal State Long Beach professor Barry Dank criticized the UC Regents' recent ban on professor-student relationships as an 'unethical intrusion into private lives'.

Topics included: the police-state measures college administrations use to enforce such bans; how important bonds between faculty and students are being weakened or destroyed because male professors must walk on eggshells around female students; how the 1984 book The Lecherous Professor and it's cartoon-like "woman good/man bad, woman helpless/man oppressor" imagery kicked off the "banning" movement; the controversial John Dwyer/Boalt Hall case; and the real, unstated reason behind the feminist campaign against faculty-student relationships.

Callers included Matt, whose friend lost his job for calling a female fellow employee "Mi Amore," and Jonathan, who defended the UC ban as protective of vulnerable female students.

To learn about Dank's work in defense of sexual freedom and male sexuality, see Sexuality and Culture and his Academic Sexual Correctness list. To learn more about the recent ban, see "UC Regents Ban Faculty, Student Dating" (Associated Press, 7/18/03). To read a feminist perspective, see Linda Krieger's "Sexual Harassment on Campus: Moving forward at Boalt Hall" (San Francisco Chronicle, 12/13/03).