o it would appear that my little stance regarding text messaging has taken on proportions that far exceed anything I would have imagined.  On in its own website, the magazine Inside Higher Education.Com has an article on what I did; and there are now more than 100 responses to the article about my behavior.  The article is entitled “If You Text, This Professor Will Leave”.  I should like to thank Scott Jaschik for a very balanced and accurate story.  That is extremely rare these days.  My appreciation for his judicious manner is without end. 

One of the questions that keeps coming up is “Why did I bring up ethnicity at all?”  I have a satisfactory answer to that question.  Obviously, I do not think that this or that minority is more or less intelligent than anyone else.  Rather, I was making a simple moral suasion point that goes like this: Insofar as minorities are going to complain about racism and the lack of minority students and professors, there is something rather incongruous when they are brazenly disrespectful to a minority professor.  I could be wrong about the point.  However, there is nothing racist about the point. 

I know that various groups have used a like line of moral suasion.  Surely, there was a time when a woman professor might have uttered such a thing to a woman student.  The members of all sorts of groups have thought it particularly important to be respectful of one another in the presence of non-members of that group.  Jews have; blacks have; women have.  And so on.  I am sure poor whites have, too. 

I have no interest in defending the validity of the point, though I think it has merit.  I merely wish to observe that there is nothing racist about it.  There is no presupposition of inferiority of any sort.  The worse that one can say is that the view presupposes a slightly higher expectation in terms of behavior on the part of minorities.  Just so, there is nothing unsavory about this higher expectation.  Certainly, this expectation does not presuppose some particularly weighty burden.  This is no doubt an old school thought.

It is a most interesting fact about race-relations in the United States that we no longer seem to know how to talk about race critically without supposing that there is some form of racism involved. 

At Syracuse University, there has been something of a rush to say that I am racist given that I mentioned ethnicity.  Let me concede for the sake of argument that I should not have done so, there is still the question of how was my doing so racist.  Not every infelicity involving race is racist. 

A racist is motivated by the desire to harm someone simply owing to her or his race or by the belief that someone is inferior simply owing to her or his race.  Does anyone think that I harbor some desire to harm Latinos or Cubans?  Does anyone think that I believe that Latinos or Cubans are inferior in some way?  There is simply no evidence of that at all.  And that is for good reason; for I can say that Latino students stand among some of the most talented students of whom I have taught and of whom I am most proud.  In fact, I put an enormous of amount of my intellectual credibility on the line for a given Latino student; and it paid off.  That student will be going to an Ivy League graduate school in the fall. 

On a different note, there is an issue that I simply cannot grasp; and I am hoping that someone can make sense of it to me.  To begin with, I simply love what I do.  And I am blessed with a fairly good memory.  Indeed, I make a point of learning lots and lots of names in my 350 or so person class.  I do not lecture.  Rather, I give a presentation, aiming to move with grace and aplomb between the language of my students and the ideas of academia.  This presentation includes music that is appropriate to the theme of the lecture.  Yet, I am often described as arrogant.  Am I confident?  Absolutely.  But I assume that I am no more confident that Dean Cathryn Newton of the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University or Chancellor Nancy Cantor of Syracuse University or former Vice-Chancellor Deborah Freund of Syracuse University.

It is inconceivable to me that I have more self-confidence than these women or, for that matter, any number of my male colleagues.  Yet, I am frequently referred to as arrogant.  Indeed, there is no small number of people on the website of InsideHigherEducation.Com who told me to “Get over myself”. 

I had always supposed that standing up for principles of the right constitute a virtuous thing—not a display of arrogance.  The only thing that I can suppose harkens back to Shakespeare’s observation of protesting too much. 

I am extremely fortunate in that I am a tenured full professor with adequate professional collateral.  This enables me to take stands without running the risk of losing my job.  I am poignantly aware of the fact that there are lots and lots of people who are not in that position. 

Let me conclude with a remark about why I take the stand that I do.  To begin, I attach enormous importance to the moral climate of the classroom; and I think that small things taken together can make a huge difference.  I am not comfortable directly approaching a student and asking her or him to leave.  There are issues of liability that arise here, should the student inaccurately describe what I did.  For instance, what if the student claims that I threatened her or him?  That is not good; and if the student is a woman, then it is even worse.  I may not know the student’s name; and the student may not give it to me. 

Walking out is the most effective thing that I can do on the spot.  The issue is not to punish people but to take a stand.  And it has been exceedingly effective over the years, with this semester being the quite obvious exception.  If I could take a stand without walking out I would. 

I have learnt much from perusing the comments about the issue on the website of Inside Higher Education.Com.  And I am sure that I will evolve in my handling of matters.  Still, there is this: We absolutely must not let the extraordinary technology that is available to us become an impediment to our showing respect to one another. 

On the computer technology front, I have more than most, including many of my students; and I absolutely love it all.  I simply cannot imagine life without my computer.  Still, it is of the utmost importance to me to show respect to others, including my students.  And I know that I cannot do that if, at every instance, I give pride of place to technology, no matter what else is going on.  And as far as I can see, the simple truth of the matter is that this holds for everyone: young and old; student and non-student.  It is a human thing. No more, but certainly not one iota less.

I have received numerous emails from students.  But two particularly stand out.  Both praised me for my teaching.  One email came from a student who identified himself as a Shiite Muslim who saw me as a caring professor whose choice of music for lecture made a difference to him.  The other email came from a student who identified herself as a victim of child sexual abuse and who thanked me profusely for my remarks about trust and self-disclosure in connection with the topic of child sexual abuse.  That was the lecture during which the student was text messaging on the front row.  In any event, these two emails have elevated my soul.  No one can have everything.  Amid all the criticism, I am blessed beyond words to have received these two emails.  Insofar as an email can count as a gift from God, surely these two do. 

Again: Thank you Scott Jaschik for a very balanced and accurate story.