I would not ordinarily do this: I wouldn’t ordinarily attack a colleague in public over something that colleague said in a non-academic publication. Thankfully, David Gilmour isn’t actually a colleague of mine, despite what you might have read. Gilmour is emphatically not a “University of Toronto literature professor.” He is a novelist and a broadcaster; he teaches a few classes at Victoria College; and he makes extremely blinkered statements about literature. He’s not a member of the English Department, or of any other department of literature at U of T. His title of “Professor,” as listed on the Victoria College website, is an honorific, as far as I can tell.
As he says himself, “I got this job six or seven years ago, usually the University of Toronto doesn’t allow people to become professors without a doctorate. You have to have a doctorate to teach here.” Damn straight. (Actually: no, not really. Though it’s mostly true. Thankfully, most instructors without a PhD don’t sound like David Gilmour.)
Anyway: David Gilmour is not a colleague of mine. And as far as I can tell from his published comments, he isn’t much of a literature professor either. I don’t want to belittle the man: he evidently puts in the work. As he told the Hazlitt blogger, he loves Proust so much, he’s read him twice. A true worker in the vineyard of the literary gods.
The biggest hits on his shelf, he says, are Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Proust. His love for these guys is reflected in his teaching, which focusses on “Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.” But not, it seems, the twice-read Proust. The massively guy-guy Proust, notorious philanderer, heavy drinker, gregarious man-about-town Proust. (Not the Proust you know? Someone might want to drop David Gilmour a note. Or a biography.)
And of course, Gilmour won’t teach women authors, because he just doesn’t love women authors enough. Except for Virginia Woolf, whom he loves so much he can’t teach her, because his students, even in third year (he teaches third-year classes?) aren’t smart enough for Woolf.
Here’s the thing: I’m glad David Gilmour isn’t teaching Virginia Woolf. I’m sorry he’s teaching Chekhov, and Tolstoy, and Fitzgerald. I don’t really care about Roth or Henry Miller: he can teach them to death as far as I’m concerned. There must be other authors who need the kind of pseudo-biographical rubbish Gilmour heaps on Chekhov, who apparently was “the coolest guy in literature.” (Christopher Marlowe called to complain: What makes Chekhov so cool? Whom did Chekhov ever kill? Did Chekhov ever catch a knife in the eye? Or get done for coining? Fuck that milktoast Chekhov.) Chekhov also laughed loudly. And he made everyone around him a better person. Man, that Chekhov. What a guy. What a guy-guy.
I don’t know if this inane interview bears any resemblance to what Gilmour is telling his students. If it does, I’m sorry. They might as well read Wikipedia. Rather notably absent from the interview: literature. Rather notably over-present: authors. Profession of the interviewee: author.
So that’s all a curdled mess of intellectual mediocrity. And really not worth bothering with. What is more troubling to me than the initial interview, though, is Gilmour’s follow-up conversation with the Globe and Mail, in which he explains what he really meant to say:
People are calling you a sexist for refusing to teach books by women. Were your statements in Hazlitt misrepresented in any way?
They were totally, totally misinterpreted. I said, look, I’m a middle-aged writer and I am interested in middle-aged writers. I’m very keen on people’s lives who resemble mine because I understand those lives and I can feel passionately about them – and I teach best when I teach subjects that I’m passionate about.
So in order to teach, you have to relate?
I believe that if you want to teach the way I want to teach, you have to be able to feel this stuff in your bones. Other teachers don’t, but I don’t think other teachers necessarily teach with the same degree of commitment and passion that I do – I don’t know.
It is obviously Gilmour’s prerogative, as a middle-aged writer, to be interested (exclusively?) in other middle-aged writers. He sounds staggeringly narrow-minded and parochial to me, but he’s allowed to be those things. I kind of thought “write what you know” was a first-book sort of principle, but I’m not a writer, and I don’t know. But what such an attitude has to do with teaching is entirely beyond me. And I am a teacher, so I believe I know a thing or two about that.
Is passion about your subject matter important in teaching? Absolutely. Is the passion required in teaching typically stirred because the teacher identifies with the author or the text she teaches? I seriously hope not. I can only speak for myself, but I can categorically say that I have never identified with Shakespeare. (Marlowe, well. Is wanting to be someone the same as being someone? [For the record: I don’t want to be Marlowe. I like my eye-sockets too much.]) I don’t believe I have a reputation for lacking passion for my subject, though. But what do I know. From what I can observe in my colleagues, I don’t think too many of them only teach authors in whose works they see mirror-images of themselves. English Departments would otherwise be rife with psychopaths, morbidly jealous types, would-be kings and queens, and wealthy socialites. And people who ride around on donkeys. (They’re not?) I don’t even want to think about how dangerous a work environment history departments would be.
The exact opposite of Gilmour’s point is true: good teaching requires empathy — an effort to understand things, ideas, and people totally unlike you. Some of those people are your students. Some of those things are of the past. Some of those ideas are the ideas of authors from different cultures than yours, and yes, shockingly, even of a different gender. Engaging with those people, things, and ideas is not just what research means, and why research is necessary, it’s what reading is.
Gilmour’s account of his teaching, by contrast, is strikingly devoid of empathy. Chinese authors? Can’t love them. Queer authors? Can’t love them. (But Marcel….) Female authors? Can’t love them. White men who are like me or who I want to be? Love those. Sympathy is what this view of things is all about: one big group hug among guys across the twentieth century, all guys like Gilmour. What’s genuinely hilarious, rather than merely depressing, is the predictable homophobia that goes hand in hand with this chest-thumpy, circle-jerky, narcissistic literary self-love-fest: Gilmour loves Chekhov so much, he’d marry him tomorrow if only they weren’t both so amazingly straight. Though “literary” seems almost incidental. None of what makes Chekhov a cool guy, after all, has anything to do with the plays or short stories he wrote. It’s all about his “personality.” His grace. His generosity. And his “bellicose laugh.”
This is a ranty post, because I’m in a ranty mood. I’ll stop ranting now. But not without this: David Gilmour is not a professor of literature. He’s someone who teaches a couple of courses on an odd assemblage of texts. David Gilmour does not talk or think like a professor of literature. He doesn’t say the sorts of things professors of literature tend to say. He doesn’t seem interested in the sorts of things professors of literature are interested in. David Gilmour is not my colleague.
Most crucially, David Gilmour doesn’t seem to grasp why anyone should read literature at all. We can argue about whether Hamlet is right or not when he claims that art holds a mirror up to nature. But let’s just say he is. Here’s what Hamlet doesn’t say: that art is a mirror you choose to pick up to see yourself. Art shows you a mirror. That thing you see in there isn’t supposed to be your pre-conceived self-image. It’s something strange, and alien, and scary, or ridiculous, or dull. But it’s something that demands engagement. And sometimes, it becomes something that you realize is in fact you — but that’s not meant to be a happy realization. If the thing you see when you look into a book looks exactly like what you think you look like, you’re doing it wrong. And David Gilmour is most certainly doing it wrong.
229 Responses to The Loneliness of the Old White Male
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Holger Syme's work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.Images may be reused as long as their source is properly attributed in accordance with the Creative Commons License detailed above. Many of the photos here were taken at the Folger Shakespeare Library; please consult their policy on digital images as well.
Oh goodie, I’d like to teach a course on Patrick White, Sebald, Pelevin and that Nigerian chick, who writes like a really straight guy. I’m passionate and could persuade ppl to read these – my fav authors- where do I sign up? Kids love when I present and always give me high scores even though I have no training, they think I rock.
win a GG and sell a shitload of books and you too can teach VIC369 – Susannah2’s Favs
I guess the author of this article is what you call a guy who sounds like a bigger douche than the guy he’s trying to make look like a douche.
Gilmour should write a response titled : The Ego of the PhD
Gilmour’s fault lies in saying straight – leaving out Proust, Wilde, Byron and Flaubert. Otherwise, the vast majority of the world’s finest authors, playwrights, film directors, comedians, scientists, philosophers are male…
It’s the leap from “it would be great if everyone equally appreciated all forms of literature, all authorial voices, etc”, to “this guy is a bad person because he admits he doesn’t” where you lose me. Having a personal taste that happens to be your own does not necessarily imply a lack of empathy. The guy just wrote a book about an woman facing her death that certainly didn’t lack it. Reading can be, but certainly is not exclusively about learning about people totally unlike you. Awesome that you’re apparently so broad in your appreciation and attempt to pass that perspective that on to your students, but there is no need to be so condescending and dismissive of someone who isn’t as if that is the only measure of value of a teacher. Personally, I’m more into English teachers that just communicate their personal passion and don’t get lofty and preachy and pretentious and quote tired bits of Hamlet when delivering their pet theories of what literature is about and why we read. But hey, to each their own.
I taught English Lit. at University for many years before I retired. I’m glad Gilmour can teach Chekhov et all with passion, but I think a real lover of literature, teaching and students (cf. Roger Ascham’s “The Scholemaster”) can bring passion to the teaching of many more writers than Gilmour lists. It’s a matter of the teacher becoming as transparent as possible (of course he/she is necessarily a filter) but nevertheless trying to get self as much out of the way as possible and helping the student perceive the writer from a sympathetic viewpoint that takes into account the context of when, where, and how he/she lived. I can teach both Milton and Marx with passion, Dickens and Virginia Woolf, Swinburne and George Herbert. It’s not a matter of identifying with the writer (me? identify with Dickens, Woolf, Herbert? I wouldn’t have the nerve.) but of clearing away things that can obstruct our perception of the writer. Terribly old-fashioned and out-of-date, critically speaking? Yep. and not the least bit ashamed.
[…] to say the academic/pc/CanLitt mob are up in arms…how dare […]
Professor Syme,
Your reason for posting this rant is obvious: You want to distance yourself from David Gilmour. That’s understandable. But to slather false indignation all over your piece with an industrial-sized trowel is overdoing it perhaps. You’re not outraged as a teacher. You just don’t want to look bad because the media is reporting on this and you are a white male teaching canonical lit at U of T. Be honest next time.
Gilmour can read and write whatever the fuck he wants. That he is teaching an all-male syllabus, however, is embarrassing and silly. There are scores of female authors who have done Love, Sex and Death just as good and better than male writers. But instead of doing something constructive like, say, drawing up a syllabus of femme-penned works for Gilmour and sending it to him, or better yet, giving it to him in person, you remind us over and over that Gilmour is not a professor of literature and not part of the English Department. Not part of your world, you mean.
Rather notably absent from your rant: Teaching. Rather notably over-present: You. You want your readers to know how different you are from Gilmour. You want them to know that you are a teacher first, not a novelist or a broadcaster. You want them to know that you would never inject your preferences and proclivities into what you teach and that Gilmour’s a dinosaur for teaching straight white guys. Of course, you are safe from such criticism because you do the early modern lit, which is the sole domain of white (and possibly straight) men, and your criticisms of Gilmour have already been done elsewhere, and better. What then, is the point of your post?
To make you look good by comparison. To make you seem like a nice guy. But you’re not. You’re just as arrogant and self-loving as Gilmour is. This is painfully apparent in the sheer delight with which you inventory his faults.
Predictably, and despite the fact that you’re a teacher, you fail to mention the most important part of University: the student experience. What you don’t mention is how you would teach Gilmour’s course given the oppotunity. You make arrogant quips about how you “don’t really care about Roth or Miller” so you’ll let someone you consider a poor instructor teach them. Forget the former’s significant contributions to American-Jewish literature, or the latter’s achievements in stylistic experimentation. You don’t care about them so you don’t care that students might. Just like Gilmour, you let your personal taste affect what you say. Significantly and tellingly, you have ignored all posts by former U of T students in this thread, responding only when people misquote you or if they take your words out of context. It’s all about you and how you look. And of course you just had to throw in that pedantic aside about Marlowe just so we all remember that you went to Harvard. It’s all about you.
I did my undergrad at U of T, majoring in English and History. I’m currently doing an MA at a different institution. I was, and still am, amazed at the high percentage of awful teachers in the English department. Timid sessional instructors who could barely form sentences, tenured dinosaurs who squinted suspiciously at any student who read a text differently, and eye-on-the-clock profs who baldly stated their disdain for undergrads. I had ‘em all.
I had three good profs in the five years I went there (it took five years because I was working a lot to put myself through a school that pays sub-par teachers astronomical amounts of money): Heather Jackson (brilliant!), Neal Dolan (I did my first year at U of T Scarborough. This man truly loves to teach and it shows) and David Gilmour (surprise!). All this outrage at how Gilmour compared teaching to being in front of a camera is noise. It’s very obvious to anyone who has taken his classes what he meant: He knows how to speak about things. I know this may sound like a pre-requisite for teaching literature at U of T, but believe me: it isn’t. There are awful teachers all over that campus. Seriously. Some of them should be barred from speaking in public. Their droning voices profane the atmosphere. They simply cannot teach.
(Julian Patrick gets an honourable mention here as a good prof. He can ramble on but he really cares about what he teaches. Also, he gives out his personal cell phone number to students so he can be on-call to help with assignment. Find me another prof who does that!)
Anyway, I took Gilmour’s class and loved it. 90% of my classmates were female, and they did not complain about the male-centric syllabus. On the other hand, as a gay male, I signed up for the Queer Lit course with great excitement. I wanted to read about all things queer, but I also wanted to read gay male writers writing about the gay male experience. But in that year-long course there were just three texts written by males, only one of whom is was a confirmed gay (Plato, Shakespeare, and Baldwin). But although I signed up because I was curious about gay male literature, I was not at all disappointed in the female-centric syllabus because it was excellent. Alison Bechdel, Judith Butler, Gertrude Stein, Monique Truong, Jeanette Winterson, Leslie Feinberg, Anne Bannon, Djuna Barnes, are all authors that I now cherish. It’s totally fine to read a narrowly focused syllabus (an abnormally high percentage of the novels in that course were set in Paris). My fellow students and I loved that course and we all loved Gilmour’s course. And take note: anyone who knows Gilmour knows he is not homophobic.
Your rant has the smarmy undertone of the “final word”, as if you’ve solved the Gilmour problem just by deigning to dash off a few self-serving paragraphs, which smacks of arrogance. You dismiss other authors just as quickly and derisively as Gilmour, which is arrogant. You are using this controversy as a trampoline to display your benign, teacherly demeanor, to announce yourself to the world as a shining beacon of intellectual fairness and excellence, which is absurd. Why do you need to state how unlike Gilmour you are to look like a good teacher? What motive for this post could there possibly be except to tell everyone what a great guy you are?
Your motives are just as arrogant and distasteful as Gilmour’s literary preferences, but at least he’s being honest. And contrary to your opinion, he is a great teacher. Your snide dismissal of his novels (three of which are excellent, by the way) makes me think you’ve never seen him in the classroom. Perhaps you should, before you dismiss him outright. And maybe Gilmour, your…col…co…co-worker (?) should read some female authors until he finds one he loves (and there are plenty to love).
So bring him a syllabus. You work at the same place. I’m sure you’ll see him before I will. I suggest throwing Donna Tartt’s The Secret History on there because it’s a campus novel and everyone loves those. The rest is up to you, learned professor.
You care so much about teaching? Teach Gilmour a thing or two about literature. Don’t sit around and talk about how swell you look in comparison. It sounds just like the desperate cry for attention that it is.
Dear Benjamin,
this is a long comment, and in the parts where it doesn’t resort to personal insult, a thoughtful one, and I don’t want to leave it without a response. I’m too tired now, though, so you will have to wait (as I’m sure you’ll do with baited breath). One quick point, though: I don’t understand what you mean by the Marlowe comment. You may not have found it funny, but I don’t think you can seriously think I was being pedantic (“Point of fact, Mr Gilmour: Marlowe has more coolness points than Chekhov, as established by Miller and Wisemore, 2009: 102-13” is not what I said). And since I didn’t mention my graduate institution (why would I?) and since Marlowe is being taught in pretty much every English department in the world, I don’t know how my possibly lame joke could have evoked Harvard. Now, that was a pedantic response, but also a genuinely baffled one.
“(Julian Patrick gets an honourable mention here as a good prof. He can ramble on but he really cares about what he teaches. Also, he gives out his personal cell phone number to students so he can be on-call to help with assignment. Find me another prof who does that!)”
In my experience the profs who gave the class their numbers were ironically super busy professionals with full time commitments outside uni (also by far the most humane and normal of my profs). They realized we were paying out of our asses for a service and felt an obligation to make sure we got value for our money, probably because of their tenure in reality.
To reply to some remarks above, no, it’s not snobbery to note that someone claiming a credential or position – a UofT professorship – does not have that credential or position. If the CEO of a company claimed to be its CFO – and went on to make stupid and, to many, offensive remarks about the work of CFOs that were widely publicized – it would be sensible to point out that the CEO in question was not a CFO and did not know much about being a CFO. This is the point being made when professors of literature at UofT like Holger Syme point out that DG may be an instructor but he is not a professor of literature at UofT, and does not belong to any UofT department of literature. Not just Prof Syme but officers in Victoria College, the UofT Provost’s and President’s Office, and the UofT Department of English are busy trying to get this fact across today – rather too late, obviously – precisely because the public has been misinformed. I would add the professorship that DG is sometimes said to hold (e.g. in his directory and staff listings on the Victoria College website, on his facebook page, on Amazon, by the Globe and Mail) – the Pelham Edgar Visiting Professorship – does not seem to exist. Victoria College records that DG held a Pelham Edgar Visiting Lectureship in 2007-8. But he hasn’t held that position since 2008. That visiting lectureship currently held by Linden MacIntyre.
It seems to me that in every university there are professors who devote themselves to various sub-specialties of literature. There are women’s literature courses, queer literature courses, Canadian literature courses, and any number of others. I don’t doubt that the breadth of sub-categories has mushroomed since I was an English major.
Different professors are typically known for different sub-specialties. If a women’s literature professor admits to preferring the work of women to that of men, I sincerely doubt that many would swoon in shock. It is not a secret that professors, like most human beings, have preferences, and that those preferences do influence their reading lists.
In this case, as Syme takes great pains to tell us, Gilmour is not even a full professor, although the claim that he is not a “colleague” is factually wrong (Syme is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts). His reading list reflects his personal preference, which is no different than most. It is curious that so much venom is aimed at a man who has simply expressed a preference for one type of author over another. Granted, he comes across as an arrogant man and I can certainly see why he has not made many friends in the faculty.
The most telling thing in this article is the choice of words used in the title. Notice the reference to “white male”. What might the subtext of that little addition be? Did Mr. Gilmour express a preference for “white” males? I don’t recall seeing that anywhere in the interview. This detail is Syme’s addition to the mix, not Gilmour’s. That alone should tell you something about where much of the venom in his critics is coming from.
It’s a fair point: No one is accusing an African-American studies professor of being a hack (or a racists or misandrist) because they refuse to teach “white men.” The litmus test for hypocrisy (assuming this is an argument about fairness and not mere misandry) is to change the identities of the oppressor and the oppressed. If in the second version the result would be morally unacceptable to the author, the author is a hypocrite.
This wasn’t the focus of my post, but actually, I’d accuse any instructor who puts together a course based on what he or she loves (and nothing else) of lacking an intellectual justification for that course. If some colleague proclaimed that she just can’t love any white authors, and thus will only teach the writing of persons of colour, I’d find that suspect. African-American studies, on the other hand, is a coherent field of academic inquiry. It’s not Prof. X’s favourite books, it’s books written by authors from a particular background, often with particular thematic preoccupations and stylistic traits. If David Gilmour wanted to propose a course on middle-aged male writers that specifically studied that literature from a critical and analytical, perhaps even historical, perspective, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. But even such a course would probably need to include some books that the instructor might find interesting, or usefully challenging, but not utterly loveable.
But here’s the thing: pretty much every African or African-American studies professor will end up teaching things that don’t fit into those categories at some point in their lives. You don’t actually have to look very far. Uzoma Esonwanne is a professor in the UofT English department who, per his faculty profile, specializes in postcolonial and diasporic African literatures. Right now he is teaching a course full of such notable African authors as Kierkegaard, Homer, Sophocles, Anouilh, Shakespeare, Defoe, except of course none of these people are African. Esonwanne isn’t even the exception to the rule. At my undergraduate institution, the University of Kansas, William Harris is a professor who specializes in African-American poetry, particularly Amiri Baraka. But he’s teaching a course that puts Baraka in dialogue with Allen Ginsberg. You can’t fully appreciate a writer like Derek Walcott without understanding how he was influenced in his younger days by Eliot, Pound, and Milton. This African-American studies professor who refuses to teach white authors is a straw man. If any exist, they are exceptions rather than the rule.
Bingo. Thank you.
“At my undergraduate institution, the University of Kansas, William Harris is a professor who specializes in African-American poetry, particularly Amiri Baraka. But he’s teaching a course that puts Baraka in dialogue with Allen Ginsberg. You can’t fully appreciate a writer like Derek Walcott without understanding how he was influenced in his younger days by Eliot, Pound, and Milton. This African-American studies professor who refuses to teach white authors is a straw man. If any exist, they are exceptions rather than the rule.”
Heck, the biggest Henry James fan I know is Chip Delany. (And if you don’t know who Chip Delany is, you are either sadly culturally deprived or hopelessly bigoted.)
Societal context. It’s a thing.
Thank you for writing this. I had been wondering about Gilmour’s students, who, in one piece I read, he said are mostly women–wondering if maybe they’re owed a little more than they’re getting.
You should do a post about the Franzen flap–I’d be interested in your take onit. (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/09/19/jonathan_franzen_hates_the_internet_pens_an_oversharing_subtweeting_indictment.html)
Greatest take down yet of the fool! Well done!! This should be a required posting for all newspapers who want to present both sides of the arguments instead of just letting the internet trolls who want to go on and on about prerogatives ramble on in the comments section.
In a follow-up to my original comment –
Looking at the University of Toronto Undergraduate Arts & Science Union Anti-Calendar for 2010/11 here is how Prof. Gilmour’s students rated him:
Enrolled: 20; Responses: 17; Retake Rating: 100%
“Students absolutely loved this course and thought Gilmour was amazing. Students felt they learned so much and that everything was relevant and relatable. Gilmour was very passionate, friendly, and an effective instructor.”
Now looking up the reviews and scores of two or three members of the English department who I found to be rather poor teachers and uninspiring, I find, no surprise, that I am not alone in thinking this and that students in their classes gave them Retake ratings in the 50-65% range, even sub-50% in one case. Now I know these ratings are not infallible, and one professor I enjoyed studying under very much and who I mentioned in my earlier comment gets scores in the 60s when I personally would (and did) rate his teaching much higher. Ratings are majority rule, like elections. However, my point is that Prof. Gilmour, whatever his stated personal views, teaches a very high quality seminar and his students see that and it is reflected in his student’s ratings. His ‘Love, Sex & Death seminar, on a scale of 1-7, earned him response ratings of Presents: 6.3, Explains: 6.7, Communicates: 6.9, Teaching: 6.7, Learning Experience: 6.8 – these are very high scores. His seminar had four male students and sixteen female students as I recall.
Also, in response to Kate Holland’s comment, I can assure you that David Gilmour’s teaching of Chekhov in his seminar was both excellent and inspiring, so no need to feel sick about it.
And whatever the robocalls, a lot of people voted for Stephen Harper.
See what I mean?
Matt I love you. I love how you responded to this and that you identify yourself as a teacher, and mentioned empathy as vital to teaching. I am so so proud of you!!!! I’m so proud of my menschy Sergi 🙂
The best part of this is the way he ALMOST says something gracious about teachers who are not him, and then promptly backpedals. “Yeah, I guess SOME professors can MAYBE teach authors who have different chromatic or sexual configurations from the professors themselves” — and here you would expect him to complete the thought with something like, “and those professors have a lot to teach me” or “and I am working toward developing that kind of skill myself”. But instead he says, “but maybe those professors aren’t as passionate as me?” And then he dismisses the question with a magnanimous, “I don’t know.”
His total lack of self-awareness is almost beautiful.
He doesn’t see anything wrong or lacking in skill with teaching exclusively from his favourite genre. That’s his opinion. You disagree with that opinion and think he should have a different one. That’s cool. But mocking him for not sharing your opinion as if that was a lack of self-awareness is just silly. This is how he sees his role as a teacher — if he actually thought he had to change that and that he had a lot to learn from other professors, then he would be you, not more aware of himself.
david owes me money which he refuses to pay me, so, in the spirit of revenge, let me say that he is over 60 and only his egotism allows him to refer to himself as middle-aged
[…] And Holger Schott Syne, the Chair of the English department at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, wrote in a scathing blog post that the non-Ph.D.-holding Gilmour is not a “colleague of mine” and his title of ‘professor’ is “honorific.” […]
Dear Holger: Do you know the woman down the hall? http://www.dangerouswords.org/satira/woman-down-hall-responds-david-gilmour/
Mr. Syme, I applaud your reasoned views on the unfortunate Gilmour. And I am amazed to find you, on this page, being so often regarded as a voice crying out in the wilderness. Discouraging amount of wilderness around here.
This. This. So much this. Though if, as clearly stated in this article, Gilmour is less a professor and more an enthusiastic author teaching on subjects which inspire him, then I’m somewhat less likely to dogpile him. But still. All of this. Empathy. Expanding the horizons. Critical thinking even with regards to authors or subject matter to which we cannot easily relate ESPECIALLY because we cannot easily relate to them. Thank you.
Thanks, Professor! This was a great read and made me glad to have had you for a teacher back in second year.
It was so disheartening for me to read David Gilmour’s interview because, as students, I think that we have a tendency to look up to our professors and sometimes put them on this rose-coloured pedestal… and that he says + thinks such narrow-minded things was pretty disappointing. I read in the paper this morning that he’s planning to issue a formal apology (even though the University hasn’t asked him to) but I find myself feeling a bit leery about it. I guess we’ll see what happens.
God, what an awful interview and what a needed response.
Seriously, this is the best thing on the internet right now. Thank you.
Aside to Edward: read more Georgette Heyer.
There’s a hilarious cognitive dissonance in this whole flaccid piece as the writer tries to simultaneously allow Gilmour his passions while also saying that they’re wrong for no better reason than it’s wrong to think that way. Overall, it’s interesting how this writer blasts Gilmour’s “staggeringly narrow-minded” view with one that’s even more so.
I have studied literature and despite having gone to (what’s perceived as) a very good university, can say many of the professors were dull and passionless in their teaching, perhaps more academics than teachers. I like the idea of a teacher who’s passionate about his material and Gilmour’s passion is perfectly reasonable.
The writer’s hysterical protectiveness of professorship is also intriguing. I get it, Gilmour’s not a professor. For all their erudition, professors aren’t all unbiased sages; they can be just as racist, sexist, ignorant and – as this piece proves – narrow-minded as the rest of us poor proles.
I didn’t feel one way or another about Gilmour yesterday and I don’t particularly today. But the knee-jerk and ignorant reactions of people like Jodi Picoult and this guy are making me more sympathetic to him.
Sometimes heat, as well as light, is required; this is true. But there must be light. Gilmour’s opinion is so narrow that barely a sliver can get through the crack under the door.
What’s sort of curious about all this is that Gilmour’s apologists focus on the course itself. Like,his decision to select these particular writers. I don’t care about that. It’s sad, but okay. I don’t like Milton, so I won’t teach Milton. Fair play. But we’re not really talking about that. We’re talking about the publicly stated, blatantly (or subtly) misogynistic / racist comments and what they say about Gilmour and the straight white stranglehold on the canon. I’m a U of T grad, an educator with experience at the secondary and post-secondary levels, and I would DEFINITELY want to know if someone who holds Gilmour’s views teaches at a place I’m paying a shit load of money to attend. Because I would consider going somewhere else, just like I’m never going to buy a book by Gilmour again, and will dissuade everyone I know from buying them, too.
Right now I’m teaching in the US. In the last day, I’ve had a dozen people ask me about Gilmour and how the English department justifies his existence at U of T. I didn’t think he was a faculty member. I’m glad this article empowers me to say, I have no relation to this idiot, and his position isn’t what he makes it out to be.
Finall, good article. xo
Academic freedom use to be about just that, freedom. To be a bone head, have different ideas and make students think was tolerated for all the right reasons. I don’t care what the man teaches or doesn’t, what he thinks or doesn’t.University students are learning to think. What scares me is the attitude from degree swinging morons who think that that piece of paper makes them the sole authorities on anything. They sound sadly in politically correct chorus and homogenized, (think boring), the sorry state of academia! Hang your heads in shame!
Nice response. I am a Professor of Russian Literature at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures (with a PhD) currently teaching an undergrad and a graduate course on Chekhov, and I can tell you that I recognize neither Chekhov nor Tolstoy in his sophomoric descriptions and it sickens me that he is teaching these authors.
🙂
Bravo! Well said! I read the original article and David Gilmour comes off as a quintessential douchebag.
Great piece. Dave Gilmour isn’t a colleague of mine either. But that didn’t stop me responding to him in an imagined interview with one of his students. It’s not entirely serious, but I couldn’t let that kind of material get away. http://isabelrogers.org/
Doctor,
I have read your article twice. Gilmour’s article twice. Watched his CBC interview and read a cbc article about this matter.
However valid your logic, (coincidentally, it’s rife with errors) your opinion is no more important than anyone else’s doctor – no matter how many pieces of paper you have. Good thing Gilmour is not a “real” teacher, now you can freely misinterpret his statements, and bash him since he’s not the intellectual elite, he’s only an author. This is a matter of taste and there’s no accounting for taste. Despite the hasty generalizations (that’s a logical falacy in case you haven’t visited the philosophy department in a while) heaved on Professor Gilmour, your colleague (whether he spent the full night at the haunted house or not), he has showed remarkable poise and public honesty that few do in your profession, especially under such unjust scrutiny. He has made perfectly reasonable concesssions that there are plenty of worthy people outside his scope of ability to instruct and the dignity to remain humble and suggest that even dispassionate essayists could perhaps instruct in those authors better. By the way, you missed the fact that a Virginia Woolfe short story is part of his class.
As a man who studied literature in Canada, I can tell you that I didn’t miss the fact that my university’s English department loaded our courses with a diverse selection of literature that was likely intended to reduce the role of white males in literature, and highlight minority’s contributions. I’m not saying I don’t agree and understand the need for this spectrum. Morally, I do believe in equality, but as an academic are morals the dominant consideration? It seems like university should try to teach us what is, and what isn’t; leaving what’s good and what’s bad to other institutions or individuals. Speaking of morals, there is a remarkable double standard in our post-secondary educational system to intentionally favour some groups ignoring their social standing (positively or negatively), and then cause upheaval when someone does the same thing counter to politically correct standards. Such pontificating is that of religious institutions, not secular academics. At one time universities were intended to pursue universal truth, limited to the scope of what could be instructed by the disciplines. Now, we’ve categorized everything to the point of absurdity, where if they ever decided to teach a masculine literature class, which they won’t -not for the value of the subject matter, but for the politics of the time- people would be given due consideration that’s there’s not a feminist stance, nor enough female writers on the curriculum. Is popular opinion the dominant force in universities too? You personally are leading me to believe so – disgracing your profession much more than even fervent sexism from Gilmour could do. If there is anything immoral about this situation is that people should be encouraged to teach what they are passionate about beyond the politically accepted. If not, that is precisely how oppression begins! I’m sure you’ve read Huckleberry Finn. As a person looking to free their mind, I see less danger in meeting a “misogynist”, than supporting a system that tries to limit people to acceptable. With such inconsistencies, how academics managed to convince anyone that you were worthy to instruct is beyond me. Except for the hard sciences, I find little difference between modern universities and the Vatican, save slightly fewer children get physically molested in universities, and way more get mentally molested instead. In my mind you are nearly all charlatans.
As human beings, we can ALL be judgemental, for example: From not only this article, but from your twitter, which I came across when trying to learn just who you are, the derision you’ve given Gilmour is appalling between two people. You speak of empathy, and yet condemn him and joke about him between students(?) like young girls slut-shaming a classmate. Where is your professionalism regarding the dignity of your institution? If you Dr. Syme are so moral and upstanding, I can’t wait to hear how you’ve resigned because the department which hired this man (of whom you do not approve) and approved his curriculums (most certainly sexist and racist in your superior estimation), doesn’t deserve to be classified with you, since you are the champion of equality and decent literature in Toronto. Unless you do so, I would like to point out the hypocrisy of a man who claims to be smart enough to instruct students because he is a “real” teacher and not know that he’s making precisely the same type of decision [making a value judgement] his “colleague” is accused of doing. It doesn’t matter, you clearly aren’t interested in the sanctity of your institution, rather the distancing of yourself from this “misogynist”. I noticed some of your “real” teacher colleagues have thanked you for saying this piece, that is telling. Clearly, speaking your mind is not a common thing in university these days, ironic. I wonder just what that culture is inadvertently teaching today’s youth, perhaps that’s something much more important to their lives than prose versus poetry in Faustus.
How about a taste of your own medicine? If I had to speculate, which is based solely on the serious insight that you have to offer on this subject, I would say you seem to me more emotionally affected than intellectually by Gilmour’s statements. I’ve noticed that you’ve made some interesting and funny comments about Marlowe, and I agree that he tops Chekov in terms of coolest author, but that’s the end of your precision of analysis, and that’s pretty disturbing doctor (Proust abstaining – admittedly I know nothing of him, nor would purport to). I’d wonder that if you’ve ever been interviewed, perhaps you’d know that the interpretation is subject to those writing the article after you’ve said your piece, which is editted however they choose. Noticeably absent as well, besides literature, are the questions that Gilmour was asked. Perhaps I’d give you that he is a pompous blowhard and needed no prompting to give such remarks, but I need evidence to jump to any hard conclusions and judge a man on it. What seems to be a lack of scrutiny into Gilmour’s statement and reasoning, and your quickness to condemn him would seem to be more motivated by a jealous desire to receive the attention that he is receiving, possibly because you are *clearly* the superior academic, and it would be unacceptable if this person could be your equal, as you have well established by not only your Ph.D. but your acceptance of a much larger field of literature. Too bad Shelf Esteem passed you up, for that sexist bastard. But hey, what do I know, I’m just a layman.
The greatest problems with academia today is that not only do Masters and Doctors think they are so intellectually superior, but now they feel the right to claim moral superiority too. Thank god for your intervention. Otherwise, I would have thought that in 300 years, educated men would have learned a lesson about witch trials.
If you TRULY wish to shape minds, perhaps you in all your expertise should go down to the other end of the hall and find out who this man is before you go out in the media and lambaste him. Demonstrate this empathy you extoll, and extend compassion and understanding that showing preference of one thing is not derogatory to another. You are your actions Holger, not your pieces of paper. I make mistakes all the time, but I know respect, and self-respect come from admitting them and apologizing. If you apologize to Gilmour, you shall find me singing a quite different tune. We can all change. At the very least understand that two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s time to make a choice.
Good day to you sir.
tl;dr bro
I can assure you, Aaron, that everyone in the philosophy dept is shaking their heads along with Syme at Gilmore’s nonsense.
Bravo! Nicely said. Political correct thinking is never correct thinking. I was thinking that when Gilmour says and does what he does it’s all sorts of wrong but If the “Doctor” taught a similar course but with solely women authors, It might be called, Women’s issues: a literary perspective” and be immediately put forward as curriculum. The same kind of correctness as when all the men’s clubs had to except women, but women’s clubs didn’t have to even ponder the thought of men in their halls… ah well, thank god I’m a visual artist have my own nightmares with that world to worry about… and could never afford a club anyways! Thank you again for a well thought out rebutal that is very succinct and logical, unclouded by emotions.
“Politically correct” = “How dare people oppress my god-given RIGHT to be a jerk to people with less social power than I have!!”
“… a diverse selection of literature that was likely intended to reduce the role of white males in literature …”
Oh, the poor things.
Didn’t bother with the rest of your screed.
I thought the point of equality is no person is intended to be scrutinized, debased, harrassed, or segregated for ANY reason pertaining to their race, sex, creed, religion, or basically anything that’s not a choice that they made. I understand the emotional component of feeling your group being separated, identified, and judged based on people who have similar appearance and/or belong to the same cultures. Both feminists and white males, indeed everyone, deals with this on some level.
I also understand the desire to pressure systems to diversify, however, any influence on a system to control or limit people’s choices is precisely the way men, white people, and every dominant group through history has subjugated “others”. In truth as long as people keep drawing lines based on trivialities such as gender, or race, we will keep dealing with these arguments. Ironically, as Lord of the Flies shows, human nature is that we will keep making such separations unless we are vigilant with ourselves, not the system.
It seems that you have little to no compassion for a group that you don’t identify with, I would caution you Origami, because without such compassion if you have your way, you may find that you are as capable of cruelty, oppression, and subjugation as any leader throughout history. Our business should be with ourselves and ourselves only, all of us should stop telling others how to live. Change starts ourselves and what we choose to give power to. Those who have dominance and control over others have always sought keep hold of it, and likely always will as long as we see them as “dominant” or “in control”. The true question is does it matter whose ideas they are?, or does the idea serve the greater good of ourselves or all? I ask you to think about this, and we’ll see into your character: If someone wishes to have women and others in your curriculum because they want a voice similar to their own, is that ANY different from Gilmour, who just happens to write the curriculum, from wanting to put in the voices that he identifies with?
As I said below: Societal context. It matters. You can’t swap one population that’s been oppressed for thousands of years out with the population that’s oppressing them. Spare me your lectures.
I wasn’t aware that there was a group that had been alive for thousands of years, let alone two of them. Are we talking about vampires here? Or are you knowledgeable about some other form of immortal that is yet unknown to folklore?
Again you make a value judgment. I can feel compassion for millionaires, not because I am above them, but because we are both humans struggling to make our way through life. Circumstance plays such a tiny part in whether someone has a great life or a terrible one. A person is just a person, always. If you truly believe that such opressions are intentionally orchestrated by one group to supress another, then you are propagating exactly what it is your dogma is intended to destroy. You are trapped by your own boundaries Origami, and you yell at the shadows on the wall of the cave, I pity you.
Amen. Blessed are those that tread loudly in the name of the bigger picture.
“Milktoast”? I didn’t realise Chekhov was a breakfast food.
It’s milquetoast, actually. For Caspar Milquetoast of “The Timid Soul.” The breakfast joke belongs to H.T. Webster.
Yes, I know. I was making light of the spelling Syme used in this article.
And Syme hangs his head in shame.
This makes me think that people are inferring an awful lot about what David Gilmour has going on his head, and adding those things to the things he said in a fluff piece interview.
So he teaches a few writers, that he feels he knows well, understands, enjoys, respects and empathizes with, and this makes him a monster. He refuses to teach female, Chinese or homosexual writers (barring Virginia Woolf) because he feels like he doesn’t understand them or empathize with them, and probably accepts that his teaching of them would be flawed, and could probably be done better by somebody with more of a passion for those sub-sects of writers.
I’m not closed minded enough to believe that there is any kind of divide between the quality of a storyteller and their sex, place of birth or sexual inclination. I don’t recall seeing Gilmour stating that he thinks that either. All he has said is that he doesn’t have an interest in teaching them, mostly because he can’t relate to them. As it stands, his short list of writers does actually include one woman (16.6% of his named writers), and as sad as it is to say, classical literature really doesn’t have a massive RELATIVE female presence. It’s mostly men. That was the shape of the world. Thank God it is slowly changing.
When I went to university, I had a teacher who taught Milton. Milton and nothing else. Ever. She had the perspective that he was the thing she understood and could teach well. I didn’t assume she was sexist or racist because of this. There are teachers who teach Carribean literature, feminist literature, japanese literature, 19th century literature and any other little categories you could choose to think of, because that is what they know.
Is David GIlmour being incredibly specific? Maybe. Does he feel like by teaching the topic he is teaching, he might impart his knowledge and perspective on to others? Probably. Does this make him unsuitable to be a literature professor, or tar him in any way as sexist or racist? I really do not think so. His class might be the best, most enlightening class in the whole world. I mean, its unlikely. I’d probably rather be taught by Prof. Syme if I’m honest.
I just think that, realistically, if you actually look at what was said, and then thought about all that has been inferred since, without reasonable cause, you’d probably feel like a bit of a goon.
Until Gilmour taught me better, I thought that a teacher of literature was supposed to teach students to engage with the written word. Not with the (alleged) personality of the writer behind it. Questioning how much the writer’s life experience has influenced the text is one (but only one) valid question, but often undertaken better by someone who does not share the writer’s unconscious assumptions (eg, on the superiority of the middle-aged white male writer).
Also, apparently the only people he feels comfortably with a *famous* straight middle-aged white guys. Names that would make it onto most lists of ‘twenty best known white male writers’. Authors that people name when they want to impress you with how well-read they are.
Also, a thousand books in storage? I’d say ‘amateur’ if not for the literal meaning of the word.
My guess is that your Milton professor taught Milton in a course that was designed to be *on Milton*, not a general lit course in which she chose to teach only Milton. (But if that’s not the case, please say so. It’s a guess, after all, and you were there.)
As for the teachers of Carribean lit, feminist lit, “and any other little categories you could choose to think of, because that is what they know” — every specialist that *I* know in these categories earned their credentials in programs that demanded a foundation in the standard canon (in my program there were historical eras and genres in which we had to show competencies). That means that aside from the specialties that Carribeanists, feminists, Victorianists, etc. teach, they’re also *grounded* in the canon from which Gilmour refuses to stray. Their choice to specialize in less canonical lit follows rather than precedes or avoids their education in that very canon.
Is it possible that Gilmour was misrepresented? Sure. It’s possible. But if so, it’s kind of amazing that in the original piece as well as in the follow-up interview he manages to say so many apparently self-serving, diversity-blind, heteronormative White guy things that leave him wide open for alleged misrepresentation
I have been fortunate enough to have had classes with both Prof. Syme and Prof. Gilmour during my UofT years, and both rank as being among my favourite professors. Prof. Syme’s 400-level seminar on Marlowe was a pleasure to to be part of. Prof. Gilmour’s 300-level Love, Sex & Death seminar was a delightful experience. David Gilmour teaches Roth and Chekhov with a passion that is infectious. Also, there were three women writers on his syllabus when I took his seminar in 2010, so I am inclined to think his saying he only likes Woolf is an attempt at humour that did not go over well.
The University of Toronto has some great English professors whose courses it was a pleasure to take – I recall with great fondness Shakespeare with Prof, John Reibetanz, T.S. Eliot with Prof. Julia Reibetanz, Horace and Homer with Prof. David Galbraith, Marlowe with Prof. Syme, Modern British Authors with Prof. Peter Allen, Modern Literature with Prof. Donald Evans, Rhetoric with Prof. Heather Murray, Early American Writing with Prof. Paul Downes, Nineteenth Century Literature with Prof. Naomi Morgenstern, and also Love, Sex & Death with Prof. David Gilmour. Like the other professors I have mentioned, Prof. Gilmour cares about his material and seeks to make the lives of his students better and richer for having studied it. There are a couple of professors teaching English who, in my opinion, have no discernible love or caring about either the material or their students, and whose classes I have also taken. I will not mention them by name, but add this only to say that Prof. Gilmour’s seminar ranks highly for pleasure and enjoyment for students, along with those courses taught by the professors I have mentioned by name above and whom I admire. I remain close post-graduation with many colleagues I met in Prof. Gilmour’s seminar and while his recent interview reads poorly, his seminar was excellent and he very much cared about the material he taught.
Thank you for this small but pertinent bit of data. It’s a brave, if quixotic, attempt to add real information to this tempest. Unfortunately, I’m afraid it’s not about what’s real, but what appears to be real. Or what can be made to appear to be. Still, an admirable comment.
All we can be sure of is that academia has not changed, even if actual writers are injected into it ( I’ll bet the next one will be harder to catch).
Dear Brent,
I don’t want to dismiss your experience, or in fact the student survey results you cited elsewhere (and apologies for not responding right away: today was a little overwhelming). Thank you for your kind comments on that Marlowe class (I am a bit of a one-trick pony…) — it was a great and interestingly mixed group of students.
I have no doubt that Mr Gilmour cares about the material he teaches — he says as much, and I have no reason to doubt him. His claim is that that love is the only basis on which he assembles his syllabi, though, and that I think it problematic. I also tried to draw a distinction between what Mr Gilmour’s actual teaching might be like (since I have no knowledge about that) and what he has said publicly about teaching and literature more generally. It’s the latter statements that I found infuriating last night, and continue to find vexing today.
I’m glad you had a good experience in his class. I’m even more glad you encountered as many excellent instructors among my colleagues as you did (and sorry that not everyone lived up to those standards — we all have off days, and years).
I personally will take a zen master of empathy over someone with a cultural connection to the subject any day. What, you traveled all the way from Elizabethan England to teach Shakespeare? No thanks. You my friend, are too close to the material to be able to adequately perform the required feats of empathy. You might actually harm the children. How absurdly narrow-mined of you. Like the Carribean, female, American, Canadian and queer professors who think they’re doing people a favour teaching authors “like them,” whose point of view they are intimately familiar with, you have failed to adequately espouse the behaviors we expect from professors of literature. Which, we all know, is to say the same sorts of things, in the same sorts of ways, and with the same sort of cliche disdain for old white men. Sorry Pal, don’t let the door on that time machine hit you on the way out.
Thank you for writing this.
As another member of the U of T Dept of English, who is also not a colleague of David Gilmour’s, I too thank you Professor Syme.
How is he able to maintain a teaching post without the necessary educational credentials?
I don’t defend Gilmour, but: do you genuinely believe that only Ph.D.s are fit to teach????
Just to be clear: I don’t believe that.
I can’t believe this is what people think you meant. Out of all the points you made…
Meh, I have to admit, as an ex-adjunct faculty member, that I had a bit of a response to the comments re his lack of qualifications. I get why Syme said it–the guy is posing somewhat by calling himself a professor–but I couldn’t help cringing. Otherwise, I thought this was a glorious take-down.
Yes, Syme made it sound like he thinks that only tenure-track faculty are fit to be called “professors.” Other than that, a good essay.
It’s usually “sessional” instructing. A lecturer can get hired on, but generally with at least a masters level education. All universities hire them. It’s limited contracts done up annually. Usually not a big deal. Unless you end up with someone like Gilmour, who apparently thinks standing in front of a camera is the same as teaching a university class.
Exceptional response. Thank you.
Thank you for this. To be a colleague is to co-exist in an environment of mutual respect and common goals. Even if that pretender were a tenured full professor, he would still not be your colleague.
No, he’d still be his colleague. He’d be his colleague if he were an axe murderer. Even English professors aren’t entitled to redefine the English language.
Thank you for ranting. All day I have been thinking about the studies that show readers to be more empathic. Reading should broaden our horizons, not reaffirm a narrow worldview.
Thanks for this.
When I first saw the story about Gilmour I thought, “I wonder what his class is titled. If it’s called ‘Old White Guy Talks About Old White Guys’ Books’ it’s kind of a stupid class, but not really a problem because surely no one will take it”. Seriously, Gilmour’s description of what he teaches, and how and why he teaches it sounds absolutely idiotic. “Books By Authors I Think I Like” has got to be the most preposterous class ever imaginged. Does anybody know what his class is actually called? It sounds like its some sort of Faculty of Extension thing designed for non-students who want something with a bit more of an intellectual aura than a bookclub, but nothing like the rigour of an actual first-year course (or of a decent book club, for that matter). And maybe somebody thought getting somebody quasi-famous like Gilmour to teach the thing would bring in some extra cash for the university.
His class is called “Love, Sex and Death in Modern Short Fiction.” He should change that to “Love, Sex and Death in Modern Short Fiction Written by Middle Aged Men Who Remind the Teacher of Himself” so students know exactly what they’re getting into.
I took his first-year class. It’s called “Cultural Forms and Meanings”. I believe his third-year class is called “Love, Sex, and Death in Short Fiction”.
Brilliant response. Thank you.
This is insanity. A bunch of self serving feminists getting bent out of shape as a result of an interview taken out of context. Because he does not “seem” interested in traditional things literary professors are drawn too he must not be one? Think about that for a second while you remove the cucumber from your loose dried out cob web covered twat.
Oh, buddy. So many assumptions. So little grace.
An eloquent response to a most horrid comment.
So you are saying Gilmour is no more a sexist than you are, Oxlong?
you sound like a real guys-guy bro hi-five
Perfect, RKMK.
I guess I am a self-serving feminist, because I endeavour to liberate myself and my communities from people who refer to our “loose, dried-out, cobweb-covered twat[s]” when they can’t handle the measured, reasonable backlash to misogyny.
You’re why feminism needs to exist.
I love it when guys assume that the only people upset by sexism are women.
Charming. Just too charming!
“Mike Oxlong”?
I’m going to have to invoke Poe’s Law on this poster.
Cool story bro
Ah, the middle-aged upper-middle-class or lower-upper-class straight white males: who doesn’t agree that they and only they are the core of Literachur? It’s arrogant guys like Gilmour who define and defend the canon.
(And don’t even talk about getting genre cooties on his litfic I’ll bet the oh-so-Canadian Gilmour doesn’t know who Susan Wood was, far less such lower beings as Nalo Hopkinson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Geoff Ryman or Elisabeth Vonarburg.)
When I read Gilmour’s interview, I despaired for the U of T English department. Your post made me feel quite a bit better.
Gilmour sounds like James Moore when he was Culture Czar: pomposity in the service of pretense, with ignorance put forward as insight. Maybe he needs to become a politician.
Thank you for your words. Thank you. Thank you.
“The exact opposite of Gilmour’s point is true: good teaching requires empathy — an effort to understand things, ideas, and people totally unlike you. Some of those people are your students. Some of those things are of the past. Some of those ideas are the ideas of authors from different cultures than yours, and yes, shockingly, even of a different gender. Engaging with those people, things, and ideas is not just what research means, and why research is necessary, it’s what reading is.”
Thank you for writing this.
For the record, I teach Shakespeare because I am rightful heir to the throne of Denmark. Also, a crazed octogenarian in the rain.
Best. Comment. Ever.
Where do I sign up for this class?
Upon the heath.
I hope to read a thousand more like this. Shout him down. Please.
Thanks so much for this. I didn’t read the original Gilmour interview (why give it traffic?) but I’m glad that you responded so clearly and rantingly. You rock.
FYI Hazlitt doesn’t operate on ad revenue, and the original piece isn’t your traditional click-bait. This is a regular series only particularly notable in this case because Gilmour has no filter/shame. You can read it guilt free.
In other words, “I don’t know what we’re talking about, but I totally agree with what you said about it.”
Since the original interview was a “what’s on your bookshelf?” puff piece, is it all that surprising that it’s heavy on talk about authors? Or that a writer (not a career teacher) might teach by picking apart the stuff they really love, however blinkered that selection might be? Or that a student might take the course not because they think it will teach them about the depth and breadth of world literature, but because, holy crap, there’s a famous writer teaching it and I want to be a writer and maybe they’ll talk about how they write and I can learn from that and, um, yeah, there are other classes, too?
Gilmour doesn’t come off terribly well in the interview, and lousy evaluations might very well cut his teaching stint short, but absent any present proof of that, isn’t it at least vaguely possible that somebody who doesn’t come from an academic background could still have something to offer a class?
So he should teach writing perhaps, but certainly not literature.
I don’t know…Syme seems awfully scornful about this fellow. To paraphrase…those that can write, write…those that can’t write become literature professors and write hachet jobs on those that can write
I have no interest in criticizing Gilmour’s novels. For all I know, he may be a very good creative writer. I’ve never read him, and I doubt I will. I’ve also never wanted to be a creative writer myself. What I am, however, is a teacher, and if this is a hatchet job, it’s taking the hatchet to what Gilmour has said about the teaching of literature. This is not a question about teacher vs writer. It’s teacher vs teacher.
oh, snap, dave! you got schooled, son! that’ll teach you not to use an ad hominem against an honest pro like professor syme. sorry, just had to stick the knife in. my mom taught english lit in high school, and i loathe jerks who use the “those who can’t write, teach,” bullcrap. christ, that sort of anti-intellectual nonsense is getting old.
Josh….I’m impressed with the comprehensive psychological profile of me which you have developed…
…I’m a “jerk” & “anti-intellectual”?
Bravo. Nailed it.
And all from one post on the internet.
You should offer your profiling skills to law enforcement.
Teacher versus teacher? Curious. I thought you said that he wasn’t your colleague. Now he’s a fellow teacher? Further, just what are you taking a hatchet to? The fact that he admitted to preferring one kind of author to another and that he allows this to influence his choice of reading lists? Is this a unique phenomenon in academia?
Do teachers typically “rant” against one another publicly over differences in their approaches to “teaching”? Quite a bit of fury expressed, particularly when (as you take great pains to point out), the gentleman is not even a full-fledged member of your department.
Further, I don’t recall Gilmour mentioning a preference for “white” male authors in the interview. Where did that little detail come from? Or perhaps your “hatchet” job (and I agree with that characterization) is a tad disingenuous.
Most of us don’t give newspaper interviews in which we define what good, passionate teaching is and what it specifically requires. Once you do that, you’re inviting commentary. That’s what participation in the public sphere means.
Gilmour noted that he didn’t love any Chinese authors. Every single author he did name was white. And given his stated view that he can only love what he understands, and finds it easiest to understand lives that resemble his own, I think it’s fair to assume from that that he’s not a lover of Ralph Ellison. But you’re right: it’s an inference. I don’t have a full list of the ethnicities of writers Gilmour loves and doesn’t love to hand.
Correct. And a rather ugly inference. The reality is you don’t know for a fact that Mr. Gilmour only likes white authors. People reading your “rant” don’t know that either, but they will infer it just from your headline. Gilmour is getting enough heat for the things he did say; I fail to see the purpose in throwing gasoline on the fire.
What’s more, Gilmour is your colleague, whether you like it or not. You are both English professors at U of T and however you try to rationalize it, that is how you are perceived.
While I wholly agree that Gilmour sounds like an arrogant blowhard from the interview (personally, I can’t say I ever took any of his courses, so I am going purely from his words) I have had many arrogant blowhards as professors throughout university (I also majored in English at U of T) and law school. Some of them were good teachers.
Nothing Gilmour said merits you posting this “rant” and publicly humiliating him. I for one miss the days when people were a little more reserved and kept certain opinions to themselves. People should think about the repercussions of their actions before they open their big mouths to “rant”. I am not excluding Gilmour in my criticism; he certainly should have known better. But at least his comments were “off the cuff” and were not mean-spirited and malicious. You, by contrast, don’t get off so easy. This “rant” is un-befitting of a professor of English literature.
Thank you for your passion about what teaching really is and taking a stand to show what it isn’t: David Gilmour. Empathy is so important to have as a professor, students can feel when its lacking. Great post!
“I’ve never read him, and I doubt I will” – Holger Syme
Isn’t that the exact philosophy for which Gilmour is being condemned?
Gilmour didn’t comment on the teaching of literature. He commented on HIS teaching of literature, as a writer who was hired to teach a narrow spectrum of literature. He made no comment whatsover on what or how others should teach. Unlike Mr.Syme.
It’s not a philosophical statement. I don’t teach contemporary literature, and have no professional need to read Mr Gilmour’s work. Privately, I read many things, but have to admit that contemporary non-genre fiction is relatively low on the list, so I suspect I won’t get to engage with his novels for fun either.
For what it’s worth, though, Gilmour did in fact comment on the teaching of literature, and on what makes one a good teacher. Re-read the interview with the Globe and Mail.
If Gilmour can’t identify with authors utterly unlike himself, then it’s likely he can’t identify with characters who are unlike him either. That makes it extremely unlikely he’s a decent fiction writer, and suggests that your variation on the “those who can’t, teach” cliche more applicable to Gilmour than to Syme.
Erratum: That makes it extremely unlikely he’s a decent fiction writer, and suggests that your variation on the “those who can’t, teach” cliche *is* more applicable to Gilmour than to Syme.
Hmmm….but his latest work is about a woman facing her own death, and has been received by critics as being more than decent, wise, full of insight…UH OH. You might actually have to read something by him before opining on his ability to write and/or empathize!
I agree that non-academics often bring a great deal to the table … but Gilmore deserves every bit of scorn heaped on him. I read the interview and found him to be a absurd blowhard whose comments are infantile and ridiculous ,,, and a shameful waste of students’ time and money.
“absurd blowhard” — Congrats! You said it all in just two words!
That’s how i felt as well. If the guy is “teaching a few classes at Victoria College,” and paid by U of T, then he’s employed by U of T, and thus, he’s a colleague, like it or not. Is he not a member of the English department because he’s being ostracized? That sort of thing happens a lot up at U of T–it’s an intensely competitive environment and I heard a lot of this snobbish sort of thing coming from professors about other professors’ research, and even heard of professors’ snagging grad student research because they needed to get published. I didn’t like this “rant,” at all, think it is intensely unprofessional. If the guy essentially doesn’t matter, isn’t important, then why waste blog space on him? As a full time instructor of English with a Master’s degree, I didn’t like the implication that if you don’t have a REAL PhD then you’re not a real academic, and I especially didn’t like the implication that if you aren’t an academic then you have nothing to offer students or academia.
Diane: Gilmour isn’t a member of the English department because he isn’t a member of the English department. He doesn’t teach there. He’s not “being ostracized,” he just isn’t isn’t a professor of English. (I’m not a professor of geology. That doesn’t mean I’ve been ostracized by the Geology Department. I’m just not a professor of geology.)
I don’t think what Gilmour said doesn’t matter, obviously. I think it matters a great deal. I explicitly said, in the post and in the comments, that I do not believe instructors without a PhD cannot be real academics. It’s an unusual situation at a research-intensive institution such as U of T, but they do exist, and all I know do stellar work. Mr Gilmour does not appear to be one of them. That has nothing to do with him not being an academic. But if you teach at a university, I expect you to uphold academic standards. Mr Gilmour, at least in his public pronouncements, is not doing that.
I’m sure you’d agree that honesty is another academic standard. Which is why you undoubtedly forgot to mention that, strictly speaking, you’re not a regular professor with the University of Toronto’s English Department either.
Dear Adam, I am, strictly speaking, a full member of the tri-campus graduate department of English. I am also, strictly speaking, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. And I am, strictly speaking, and Associate Professor in and the Chair of the Department of English and Drama at U of T’s Mississauga campus. Full disclosure, but there was nothing to disclose. If you think there was, you don’t understand how U of T works, but that’s forgivable: it’s a complex and fairly unique system.
This constant “UTM is not UT” blather is simply uninformed.
There are University systems where it would be misleading to say that professors at one campus are not professors at a main campus. University of Michigan Flint professors are not (as the phrase is normally used) University of Michigan professors. University of North Carolina Greensboro professors are not (as the phrase is normally used) UNC professors. You are here and in other comments suggesting that this is the relation between being a professor at UTM and being a professor at UT downtown. This is simply not correct – the faculties are integrated, and seminars in the (not-campus-specific) graduate programs are taught by faculty from all campuses.
The combination of ignorance and arrogance you are displaying in your repeated comments on this theme is astonishing.
Well said, the whole thing smacks of jealousy and snobbery. Get over it Syme
Dear Coraline,
I’m trying, but what I’d have to get over is not jealousy. What am I supposedly jealous of? Perhaps an explanation would help with my recovery.
Nope – no jealousy there, just awsumness by Prof Syme
Agreed. Unprofessional, socially Darwinian snob-ism.
Nope the only snob here is the clearly DWM-obsessed Gilmour…