This story makes me feel very grateful to teach where I teach.
From the College Fix:
College Offers Course Devoted Entirely To Pornography
A relatively new Pasadena City College class called “Navigating Pornography” – devoted to giving students a venue to study and discuss a touchy topic in an academic setting, according to its professor – has already prompted praise and concern.
First offered last spring, the class is a for-credit elective open to all students and does not require any prerequisites. In just one year, it’s come under national scrutiny after its instructor, Professor Hugo Schwyzer, invited a porn star to speak to its students.
But Schwyzer defended Navigating Pornography in an interview with The College Fix, calling the subject matter legitimate.
“(The course) focuses on giving students tools to understand pornography as a historical and contemporary phenomenon,” Schwyzer told The College Fix. “Students today live in a porn-saturated culture and very rarely get a chance to learn about it in a safe, non-judgmental, intellectually thoughtful way.”
[...]
He said he hopes students come out of the course with a better personal understanding of some of the seminal issues of pornography, such as: “why we love porn … why some people are deeply troubled by it … and how both to make decisions about porn in their own lives and how to have conversations about porn with others.”
Response to the course in the Pasadena community has been “excellent” in most respects, “save from some in the administration and the community,” according to Schwyzer.
“Students welcome it,” he adds.
Yet in an interview with The College Fix, a colleague of Schwyzer’s who teaches at the same community college called the course “absolutely appalling.” He asked not to be named, citing tension at the campus over the course, which recently prompted a wave of national controversy over its guest speakers: porn stars.
Read the rest here.