Business prof crosses the line

The IU community should be disturbed by a blog-post by IU business professor Eric Rasmusen titled “The Standard for Assistant Profs at the IU Dept. of English.” This article, which appeared on Rasmusen’s personal blog, criticized IU English for not hiring enough professors who have earned a Ph.D.

He has since removed the blog post due to the inflammatory comments it received, but I still find his attitude toward the English faculty to be offensive.

Rasmusen wrote that he was “surprised” to learn that the late assistant professor of English Don Belton was teaching at IU with only an M.A. from Hollins College. He proceeds to list other professors in the department whose degrees are also M.A.s or M.F.As. To this, I would remind Rasmusen that in academia, Ph.D.s in creative writing do not exist.

Most professors of creative writing at IU hold an M.F.A., which is the highest degree offered in the field.  That Rasmusen has overlooked this fact, which should alone discredit the entire post, is a good indication of the level of sophistication of his advice to the English department.

Rasmusen’s proposal begins with the presupposition that creative writing (meaning all literature ranging from fiction to poetry to drama) is not the sort of writing that “people actually read.” He is preoccupied with the idea that such work is produced by an elite corps of specialists and catered to an elite group of artists and critics. But Rasmusen forgets that “creative writing” can be found in places far from the literary journals he is likely talking about. On the contrary, creative writing probably reaches a wider audience than writing in most academic fields – including his own, business. The “Twilight” series was written by a creative writer. So was “Harry Potter.” Do these novels also look like “esoteric writing” to professor Rasmusen?

I began by saying that IU should be appalled by Rasmusen’s post (other than his insensitive timing to criticize Belton). To this point, I have outlined nothing which could be deemed so.

But, I have also not mentioned the most problematic and questionable moment in his post, which is this: In the process of listing professors of creative writing, ostensibly for the purpose of highlighting their lack of qualification as a non-Ph.D., Rasmusen has in select cases added to his description of professors’ racial labels.

To quote his post, Don Belton and Ross Gay are listed as “black,” and Debra Kang Dean as “Korean-American, it looks like.”

One professor, Alyce Miller, is listed as “NOT black” (capitalization is his). Rasmusen gives no racial description when the professors he is referring to are light-skinned. He gives no indication for why he affixes these labels when he does so, but in the moment where he wants to make clear that one professor is “NOT black” he is walking on incredibly thin ice.

Since Rasmusen wants to critique hiring practices, I will too: the Kelley School of Business should be curious to know why one of its professors is critiquing English professors with some sort of racial bent.
 

E-mail: jwslabau@indiana.edu