Citing academic and social critic Camille Paglia’s statements about transgender people and sexual assault survivors, a group of students at The University of the Arts is petitioning the school to remove Paglia and replace her with a queer person of color.
Write the petitioners: ‘Camille Paglia has been teaching at UArts for many years, and has only become more controversial over time. In recent interviews she has blatantly mocked survivors of sexual assault and the #MeToo movement, and in classes and interviews has mocked and degraded transgender individuals. She believes that most transgender people are merely participating in a fashion trend (“I question whether the transgender choice is genuine in every single case”), and that universities should not consider any sexual assault cases reported more than six months after the incident, because she thinks those cases just consist of women who regret having sex and falsely see themselves as victims.’
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Student protesters held a sit-in when Paglia gave a public lecture earlier this month and accused UArts President David Yager of defending Paglia and ‘dismiss[ing] the student protest of Paglia’s event as “censorship” and liken[ing] it to “persecution” of artists.’
The student petitioners are demanding that “Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color” and if that is not possible, then “the University must at least offer alternate sections of the classes she teaches, instead taught by professors who respect transgender students and survivors of sexual assault.”
They are also demanding that the school stop providing Paglia a platform for public events and apologize for Yager’s response to the Paglia protest. They also demand that the school meet with transgender students and survivors of sexual assault.
More than 1,250 had signed the petition as of this posting.
