A minor complaint
Jacob Levy complains about the verisimilitude of Ross’ academic career on Friends. To which I say, “Amen.” However, the story line that really frosted me was from a few years ago, when Ross was sleeping with an undergraduate. If the caricature of academia in the Blogosphere is a collection of tenured radicals, the caricature of ...
Jacob Levy complains about the verisimilitude of Ross' academic career on Friends. To which I say, "Amen." However, the story line that really frosted me was from a few years ago, when Ross was sleeping with an undergraduate. If the caricature of academia in the Blogosphere is a collection of tenured radicals, the caricature of academia in popular culture is a collection of lecherous white male who inevitably bed one or more of their students. This is true across mediums. Of the top of my head: Movies: What Lies Beneath, Loser, Terms of Endearment, Moonstruck. Television: Friends, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (remember, Riley was Buffy's TA), Mad About You, and every other movie on the Lifetime channel Books: Jane Smiley's Moo, Tim O'Brien's Tomcat in Love, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Richard Russo's Straight Man. There is no fighting it; if a fictional character is a white male professor, nine times out of ten he's sleeping with the co-ed. Why is this? Probably because, in the absence of illicit sex, our jobs appear to be intensely boring to the outside world. UPDATE: Josh Cherniss thinks this phenomenon is simply an extension of the fact that sex sells in fiction. Maybe he's right -- however, what upsets me is affair-with-coed is the only persistent trope in the fictional depiction of academics.
Jacob Levy complains about the verisimilitude of Ross’ academic career on Friends. To which I say, “Amen.” However, the story line that really frosted me was from a few years ago, when Ross was sleeping with an undergraduate. If the caricature of academia in the Blogosphere is a collection of tenured radicals, the caricature of academia in popular culture is a collection of lecherous white male who inevitably bed one or more of their students. This is true across mediums. Of the top of my head: Movies: What Lies Beneath, Loser, Terms of Endearment, Moonstruck. Television: Friends, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (remember, Riley was Buffy’s TA), Mad About You, and every other movie on the Lifetime channel Books: Jane Smiley’s Moo, Tim O’Brien’s Tomcat in Love, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Richard Russo’s Straight Man. There is no fighting it; if a fictional character is a white male professor, nine times out of ten he’s sleeping with the co-ed. Why is this? Probably because, in the absence of illicit sex, our jobs appear to be intensely boring to the outside world. UPDATE: Josh Cherniss thinks this phenomenon is simply an extension of the fact that sex sells in fiction. Maybe he’s right — however, what upsets me is affair-with-coed is the only persistent trope in the fictional depiction of academics.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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