Pedophile Professors

Apparently, it’s getting easier to find pedophiles in the faculty lounges of colleges and universities than it is in Catholic churches. “Why would any self-respecting boy want to attend one of America’s increasingly feminized universities?,” economist George Gilder asked in a column. “Most of these institutions have flounced through the last forty years fashioning a fluffy pink playpen of feminist studies and agitprop ‘herstory,’ taught amid a green goo of eco-motherism and anti-industrial phobia.”

“They routinely showcase such trendy trumperies as The Vagina Monologues, while sacrificing thousands of men’s athletic teams at the altar of Title IX.” There may be another reason why All American boys don’t want to look for tenured mentors.

“An Ivy League professor has been arrested for the third time in 11 years on child sex charges, in this case over video that allegedly shows him engaging in sex acts with boys,” the Associated Press reported this month. “Because of the charges, L. Scott Ward, a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, was being stripped of his teaching assignments, spokeswoman Lori N. Doyle said Tuesday.”

“Ward, 63, was arrested Sunday after arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport on a flight from Brazil, federal authorities said.” But at least the school got rid of him.

“A former Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania professor facing child-pornography charges failed to show up for an extradition hearing in North Carolina last week, making him a fugitive,” Piper Fogg reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education this summer. “Richard W. Gibbs, 64, worked in the communication department at Shippensburg until April when police searched his office computer and found images of child pornography, according to the local district attorney.”

“The professor immediately resigned. He was arrested in June at his vacation home in North Carolina.”

“Additional charges have been filed against him in California and Ohio.” Why did this case never come up when a committee of the Pennsylvania legislature held hearings in which they were, allegedly, going to shine a spotlight on higher education in the Keystone state? It looks like law enforcement officials in North Carolina had to work that spotlight for them.

When the Catholic Church was rocked by scandals of priests committing child abuse, it formed committees and created a zero tolerance policy to prevent future abuses. Will the American Association of University Professors put its best and brightest to work cleaning house in the Ivory Tower?

“Brett A. Sokolow, a lawyer and president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, which advises colleges on student affairs issues, says that many of his clients are seeking advice about whether they should or shouldn’t admit convicted sex offenders (though he says he gets more questions about whether colleges should hire sex offenders as employees),” Doug Lederman reported in InsideHigherEd.com in January.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.