Listen: Professor Busted for Urging Students Not To Vote for Trump
I can’t even feign surprise when I hear a women’s studies professor anywhere doesn’t support President Donald Trump. A Women’s Studies Academics for Trump convention couldn’t fill a phone booth — and I doubt the president or any of his supporters are particularly sorry about this.
I also don’t particularly expect these women’s studies profs to keep their opinions to themselves, either. You don’t become a women’s studies academic because the pay is on par with what you’d get on Wall Street or Silicon Valley. You do it because you have opinions about the patriarchy and intersectionality, and you’re going to let the world know about them, dagnabbit.
Which, fine. You do you. Nobody’s surprised academia is liberal, after all.
However, there’s a point where you cross a line. I don’t know where that line is, but directly telling your students who to vote for is way on the wrong side of that line.
Janet Gulla has found herself there. She’s a women’s studies adjunct professor at Suffolk County Community College in New York, according to The College Fix. She may be teaching online, but she’s not socially distancing herself from controversy.
In a clip from an online class, Gulla tore into any Trump voters who might be looking in.
She started by saying “he’s had four freaking years of a chance and he’s done a crap job and he’s really ruining our country.”
“Many of you, this may be the first time that you’re voting,” Gulla continued. “Um, I’m sorry this is such a contentious situation that you’re being thrusted into. Um, if any of you do still think Trump, um, you know, is a good person, I beg you to not only go into your heart’s center and think about this a little more, pull up all the stuff that he’s been doing to our country.
“Taking away so many of our rights. He’s trying to turn this into more of a, um, you know, dictatorship sort of situation.”
Gulla teaches “Sexism and the Humanities” and “Women’s Health in the 21st Century.” Her bio states she’s a research nurse whose interests include “women and medicine, women’s health issues; alternative and complimentary medicine (e.g. hypnosis, reflexology, energy healing).” I put that out there for summary judgment.
Here’s her paid political advertisement for Joe Biden:
?@SUNYSuffolk college instructor trying her best DURING CLASS to indoctrinate students to turn against POTUS & remove him from office.
This is wrong on many levels & gives our teachers a very bad name. Our classrooms should be a place for free thinking not indoctrination! pic.twitter.com/JbxDH3QPXZ
— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) September 11, 2020
This reportedly happened on the second day of classes. At least I’m assuming this is still within the drop period, so that’s a good thing.
According to Newsday, the clip went viral after Anthony Salvatore, the student’s father, posted it to his Facebook page.
“This is … not what we are paying to send our kids to school for,” Salvatore said in a Facebook post.
“You have no business telling these kids who to vote for and we will be calling the school tomorrow!!! You should be terminated on the spot!!!”
Those exclamation points were to no avail, but Gulla has been reassigned by the school.
“Pending an investigation of the content and context of that video, we have reassigned the faculty member involved in the video,” Drew Biondo, director of communications for the school, said in a statement, according to Newsday.
“Suffolk County Community College encourages any open and diverse discussion and exchange of ideas. The College does not, however, condone electioneering by faculty in the classroom.”
And probably for good reason — this is a public institution, which means it’s not just supported by tuition and an endowment but also tax dollars. It probably shouldn’t be telling your children who to vote for.
It’s already bad enough that academia is in such a state that the vast majority of professors in the liberal arts are going to skew, well, liberal. However, having survived a very illiberally leftist liberal arts education, I was never told once how to vote. Perhaps the professor thought we were all voting the same way. In my case — whoops.
Whatever the case, they all knew that was a bridge they couldn’t cross.
Gulla couldn’t be reached by either Newsday or The College Fix. I don’t imagine she’ll be talking much publicly until we’ve forgotten about this. And we will.
Meanwhile, Gulla will have learned her lesson. She can’t directly tell her students who to vote for. She can, however, give them a powerful nudge in that direction — as, indeed, most of your child’s instructors will be doing. Your tax dollars at work, folks.
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