The Skilled But Morally Dubious Teacher Problem

What if you have a teacher who is homophobic and does not believe that homosexuality is real despite contradicting evidences? What if that person is teaching a topic that has no relation to homosexuality? Should such a person be allowed to teach? This was a question that was raised in my jurisprudence class. This raises an important question: should a morally questionable teacher be allowed to teach and influence future generations, even if his/her morality has nothing to do with the topic being taught. 

The way I remember this debate, the majority opinion in my class was that such a teacher should not be allowed to teach because the homosexual students in class may feel reluctant to approach such a teacher. This would be a justified fear because a teacher who openly denies the existence of homosexuality me be prejudiced against students who claim to be homosexual, and may treat them poorly.

But despite this fear, in my opinion, a teacher who is good at his/her job should be allowed to teach, regardless of his/her questionable morality. In fact, even if the person teaching is an absolute monster, I would argue that the person should be allowed to teach, provided what he brings to the table has nothing to do with his morality or monstrosity. By this logic, I essentially say that even somebody like Hitler should be allowed to teach if he is teaching something that is completely unrelated to his questionable morality; for example, he may be interested in teaching painting and this should be fine as long as it doesn’t negatively affect the students. Let me explain why.

The Libertarian Free Will and Harm Principle:

Suppose there is a hypothetical libertarian society. In such a society, there will be minimal state interference, and every human is allowed to do as they please, as long as they do not harm others. Obviously we do not live in a libertarian society. Such a society would be difficult to find anywhere in the world. When in a position of advantage, most people interfere with the rights of others and harm them in one way or another. But this hypothetical idea provides a method to navigate our current problem.

Libertarianism represents a level of individual autonomy that is ideal for learning environments. It represents an idea of what autonomy ought to be. In a libertarian society, an individual can be as mean or as evil as they please, as long as their nature does not interfere with other people’s rights. Now try looking at the homophobic teacher from this perspective. If the subject being taught in class has nothing to do with their individual beliefs, the belief they hold does not harm the students. The teacher may believe that homosexuality does not exist, but this does not affect the right of the student to remain homosexual. Thus, both parties are allowed to hold on to their own beliefs without hurting each other.

On the other hand, assume that the students had the teacher fired because of the beliefs he held. This would be a case where the individual beliefs of the students harm the right of the teacher to remain an autonomous being. As an autonomous being, the teacher should be allowed to form his or her own opinion about the world around them. Forcing them to confirm to one particular belief, even if such a belief is true, would violate his/her right. Unless the teacher actively does something that hurt the rights of the students or does something by which there is a reasonable apprehension that their rights will be hurt, the teacher should be allowed to have his own individual thoughts.

The essential idea here is to respect the free will of each other. But this still leaves the counter-argument that the students will be too scared to approach a teacher who may hold prejudicial beliefs. Let’s consider that point. 

Fear is Not a Good Enough Excuse:

Fear is a convenient counter to free will. If you consider an educational institution as a business, the students are the consumers and it is the duty of the business to meet the need of the consumers. If the students fear a teacher, it’s the duty of the institution to remove the teacher, much like it’s the duty of a restaurant to remove a rude server. But this argument is only valid if you are willing to accept a capitalist perspective, and it comes with its own set of problems. When you take this approach, you stop considering the other party as an individual with his/her own free will. Instead, they are treated as an expendable tool. 

To help us understand the problem with the capitalist perspective, let’s shift the teacher from a homophobic position to a position where we can more easily sympathies. Instead of being against homosexuality, suppose there is a teacher with Tourette syndrome but is really passionate about teaching. The idea is pretty well depicted in the movie Front of the Class. The movie depicts the story of Brad Cohen who suffers from Tourette Syndrome but wants to be a teacher. Obviously, institutions discriminate against him because of his conditions. There is even a scene in the movie where a father removes his daughter from Cohen’s class because of fear that he may influence the child negatively. So, the situation is analogous to our previous problem since there is a fear that harm may be caused to the students, even though there is no evidence of the harm. Then, do you think it’s right to go by the capitalistic logic and conclude that Brad Cohen should not be allowed to teach even when he later received an award for being the best teacher?

A homophobic professor is certainly different from someone with Tourette syndrome. But the shift in perspective helps us understand what’s wrong with deeming someone guilty before even giving them a chance. It helps us understand why assuming the teacher will harm the students and punishing them is actually a form of attack on the teacher. You do not respect the free will of the teacher by doing so. Instead, he is treated like a disposable commodity. This highlights the danger of opinions in current society. In our quest to represent the oppressed, we may end up becoming the oppressor. 

Then, it stands to reason that a homophobic teacher should be allowed to teach as long as he is not teaching about homosexuality. If he does not actively harm the students, it’s unfair to assume danger and ostracise him for being a free human being. But what about cases where the teacher is extremely skilled and has produced value, but has also actively caused harm?

What if the Teacher has Caused Harm, But has Created Valuable Content:

Walter Lewin was a professor of physics from MIT. He was kind of a rockstar teacher and students loved him. He was superb at what he does and was well reputed in the academic community. Unfortunately, all that changed when Faïza Harbi, a private English tutor from France, filed a complaint against him for sexual harassment. 

Walter Lewin offered a course on Edx as a professor from MIT. Harbi was a student who took his course. She started a Facebook group for members of the course to have discussions and clear doubts. Walter Lewin joined the group sometime later and got in contact with Harbi. She understandably thought this was a fake account and requested proof. Lewin produced a screenshot of her Edx progress page, which only she and the course instructors would have access to (if you choose to opt for the paid certificate option on Edx, actual professors from MIT will grade your assignments). He established trust and was initially very empathetic. But Lewin soon pushed her to take part in online sexual role-playing and send naked pictures and videos of herself. This apparently lasted for about 10 months when she finally filed a complaint against him. When she did, other victims started coming forward with complaints about him. MIT eventually launched an investigation against him and revoked his status as Professor Emeritus. They removed his courses from Edx and MIT Open courseware (source). 

It’s obvious that Walter Lewin is a professor you caused harm to several of his students. Revocation of his status was justified. But what about all the courses that were removed? Was that really necessary? Wouldn’t it be sufficient to just remove his access to the graded assignments? Removing the courses made a point that he was out of a certain community, but it also caused the removal of valuable learning material. So, when the question is about balancing between punishment and providing knowledge, what should we choose?

I say we must choose to provide knowledge and we should keep the punishment for the crime separate. In today’s world, knowledge is a valuable and expensive commodity. Collages charge thousands of dollars to allow students to acquire it. In such a time, open source materials like edX and MIT Open courseware are a welcome aid for students.They get to learn college level knowledge for free, provided they put in the effort. Such open source materials remove the exclusivity of quality education, which is currently limited to a certain class of people who can afford to pay for it. It also removes other barriers to education. People are no longer limited to one stream of topics or one particular syllabus. Law students can study science, Literature students can study maths and so on. The best part is that people can do all that while learning from some of the most brilliant minds in the world. So, what happens if the material is removed?

Well, Walter Lewin’s lectures are still available on YouTube, minus all the free resources like books, calendar’s, and psets that would have been available on MIT OCW. Arguably, removing his materials did more damage to the student community rather than to Lewin. It would have been better to keep the material while altering the teacher. There are other physics classes available, but removing the material was still an unnecessary part of the punishment. The value provided by knowledge should hold a certain superiority over the criminal act of the perpetrator. However evil the teacher is, as long as his work was unbiased and skilled, it should be treated as a valuable resource to propagate the field. 

Conclusion:

As we saw, the morally questionable stand of a teacher itself should not be a ground to ostracise him unless he takes some action that hurt the students because of this morality. Ideally, people must respect the free will of one another and the right of a person to have his/her own opinion regarding something, even if such an opinion is unfounded. Even if such a teacher causes harm to students, one must consider the skill and knowledge he brings to the table. A teacher who harms students should not be allowed to teach, but that doesn’t mean we should ostracise him out of academia. Any videos of the lectures he made or any publications he has could still be useful for the development of the field. This should especially be the case with open source materials because removing the material might affect thousands of students who could benefit from the program.