Paper claims professors should be able to date students: reports
A sessional engineering lecturer has been fired from his work at both the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo for a misogynistic paper published in the instructor’s name, according to a report.
In December, the lecturer published a report titled On the Challenges of Dating and Marriage in the New Generations where he posits that professors should be able to date their students, reported the Toronto Star.
A Waterloo student reported the paper to administration late last month, saying that she was “horrified” by the content.
The 20-page paper, formatted like an academic study and uploaded in December, was uploaded to PhilPapers. It was not peer-reviewed.
The University of Waterloo first fired the lecturer two weeks ago, according to the Toronto Star, and the University of Guelph followed suit this week, according to another Toronto Star article.
The lecturer “is not currently teaching at the University of Guelph and a replacement instructor has been found,” a Guelph university spokesperson told the Star Thursday. “The university is addressing this matter in accordance with our policies and procedures.”
Guelph’s School of Engineering updated students on the matter on Wednesday evening.
“I appreciate this has been a challenging situation for the SOE community,” Ibrahim Deiab, a professor and interim director of the school, wrote in an email to students, according to the news publication.
Lecturer details ‘Difficulties of Hunting at Work’
The paper the lecturer published on PhilPapers included suggestions that “girls” enjoy rejecting “boys” and contained troubling ideas about homosexuality and racist assumptions on the romantic preferences of immigrant women, according to the Toronto Star.
It also suggests that “girls” enjoy rejecting “boys” and that feminism is out of control.
Lindsay M. Tedds, associate professor at the University of Calgary’s Department of Economics, thought the lecturer’s paper problematic.
“Not only should professors not be allowed to date students, no professor should even think it’s appropriate to date a student,” she said via social media platform X.
A majority of employees involved in workplace relationships aren't being transparent with their employers about it, according to a previous report.
Jaime Lomas, managing director employment law at DTI Lawyers, previously shared some measures employers can take to ensure romantic relationships don’t end up being problematic for an organization.