Jared Sakren is a successful theater professor who in stints at Yale University, Julliard Theatre Center and Arizona State University taught actors such as Annette Benning, Val Kilmer and Kelly McGillis. But at Arizona State University Sakren was fired in part because his performance reviews said that he was creating a climate of sexism in the classroom — the dean of the college of fine arts at ASU told CBS News that Sakren was guilty of sexual harassment.

What did Sakren do to earn such enmity? He refused to teach Shakespeare from a “postmodern feminist/ethic canon.” Translation: Sakren wanted to teach Shakespeare’s plays as having timeless insights into human nature. ASU wanted him to teach Shakespeare as an artifact of patriarchal culture that is oppressive precisely because it asserts there is something like a universal human nature (that’s a right wing myth according to the postmodernists.)

As Thor Halvorssen of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education summed up the case to the Washington Times,

ASU hired an international superstar teacher, promised him academic freedom, and then expected him to follow the politically correct orthodoxy of radical feminism and watered-down academic standards.

The irony of the case is that universities usually cite academic freedom whenever conservatives criticize their curriculum or class offerings, but quickly discard the notion whenever they need to appease leftist academics. In the ASU case, the university actually argued in court that although Sakren’s contract included a promise of academic freedom, that the clause was meaningless and legally unenforceable.

Source:

Professor fired for teaching Shakespeare gets new trial. Andrea Billups, The Washington Times.