The College Fix

When someone shows you who they are, believe them

Randa Jarrar, a professor at California State University, Fresno, has personal problems. Following the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush—by all accounts from all sides a kind, generous, admirable woman—Jarrar declared: “I’m happy the witch is dead.” Later, following the predictable and understandable backlash to her celebrating a woman’s death, Jarrar wrote: “All the hate I’m getting ALMOST made me forget how happy I am that George W Bush is probably really sad right now.” Got it: A well-respected, arguably apolitical matriarch passes away, and Jarrar is positively giddy that the woman’s son is grieving her death.

In response to her critics, Jarrar further tweeted that she makes $100,000 a year and that she “will never be fired.” This is probably true: Tenure, which for a great many professors is more or less tantamount to the Holy Grail, protects even reprehensible cranks like Randa Jarrar. Then again, no student at Fresno State is forced to take her class. And so the obvious question arises: Why would anyone study under her?

The College Fix takes no stand on the matter of university personnel decisions, and indeed there is a good case to be made for protecting faculty from administrative sanction for controversial comments. Scholarship, which when done appropriately is often a contentious business, should not, as a rule, be subject to official penalties. If such protections are extended to repellent individuals like Randa Jarrar, so be it.

But it is a legitimate question why any professor inclined to dance publicly upon the graves of the just-dead would ever be looked upon as a legitimate pedagogical resource. Whatever else one needs to qualify as an instructor, a basic sense of human decency—empathy, emotional forbearance, an ability to not be an abjectly terrible person—would seem to be a prerequisite. Plenty of my own college professors had plenty of wacky views, opinions that skewed overwhelmingly progressive, naturally—but one never got the sense that they got happy at the thought of a Republican First Lady dying. It’s not exactly a popular sentiment, nor one that suggests a particularly stable mind.

Students, ultimately, must decide for themselves how they wish to structure their education. And if they wish to learn from someone whose personal politics dictate publicly celebrating the deaths of elderly women and cheering over the grief of bereaved family members, that is there prerogative; it’s a free country, as the disgusting behavior of Randa Jarrar so eloquently illustrates.

MORE: In interview with student paper, ‘white genocide’ prof remains defiant, offers no contrition

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