Mick Hartley

The change that's swept through higher education recently, especially in the US, has encouraged a new censoriousness. Out go enquiry, tolerance, free speech; in come the new puritans. You could hardly hope for a better example than this: the case of Phoebe Goeckner and her attempts to teach “graphic art novels” and alternative comic-book art at the University of Michigan. You can read the full depressing saga here at the Chronicle of Higher Education. 

In late August of 2020, I began teaching my introductory comics course at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the same way and with the same material that I had used many times before. It’s a studio course with a smattering of history. In the first week, I assigned a technical exercise involving a comics page drawn by Robert Crumb, one of the first and most important cartoonists of the underground-comix movement. The point was to study and imitate the way Crumb created the illusion of space and three-dimensional form.

Some might call the images grotesque. In the past, though, the exercise has always been a success.

But in 2020, we were all “sheltering in place” because of the pandemic, and I was teaching on Zoom. The students Googled Robert Crumb before I could say much to contextualize his work. They immediately raised their voices in protest. Quoting from what they read, they insisted that Crumb was a “racist” and a “misogynist.” One student cried out that he had been accused of rape. Several insisted that showing any of his work was “hurtful.” They said I was “harming” the class.

I was taken aback. Comics are fundamentally a provocative medium, and Crumb is a provocative artist, but I didn’t think I had shown an especially offensive image. Crumb and his work have been the target of both high praise and bitter criticism for years, but before that moment, most of the students knew nothing about him — and seemed unwilling to question what they had read about him on the internet. Moreover, Crumb is a central figure in the history of comics. He can’t be written out of the books.

Robert Crumb – yes, I'm a fan – was a key figure in the world of alternative underground comics, but there's no question he's provocative. That was the point. But provocative now seems to be a hate word. Provoking can cause offence – and that can't be tolerated.

After that class, the students began a private group chat called the R. Crumb Hate Corner, with a customized banner featuring Crumb’s face with “Punk bitch” written across it in red letters.

A group of students who disagreed with the “haters” wrote to tell me about the chat in confidence, fearful that they would be branded sexist or racist should their dissent become known.

One of these students sent me screenshots from the Hate Corner throughout the semester. It soon became clear that the chat was not about Robert Crumb. It was about me. The “haters” were watching me carefully, waiting for me to slip up so they could add ammo to a document they were preparing, “Complaints Against Phoebe.” One day after class, two of my confidential informants shared their screen over Zoom and scrolled through the document, which described a plan to report me to the art-school administration. There was one statement that stood out to me, which I paraphrase here because I don’t have the document, something along the lines of: Let’s get this one right. We failed with the other professor — let’s do this one by the book. I inferred that they had attempted to bring charges against another teacher, without the desired outcome. Now they would try to get me, and make it stick.

It gets worse.

If you don't want to read the full CHE article, or don't have access, Jerry Coyne has written an excellent short summary, which covers all the basic points.

The nasty sneaky commissars are now the ones thriving in American universities, while the creative radical spirits hide away, frightened that they'll be next for the show trial.