Ethical objections have doomed a much-publicized course at George Mason University that required students to construct an elaborate historical hoax and place it in the public domain.
“Lying About the Past,” which was taught twice, brought the world fabricated accounts of a serial killer in late 1890s New York and of an American pirate who haunted the Chesapeake Bay. Each was preceded by a warning on the blog of the course’s creator, T. Mills Kelly, an associate professor of history. The hoaxes also came with links to falsified documents and interviews with experts.
The hoaxes, perpetrated in 2008 and last year, had varying levels of success; the one about the serial killer was debunked in minutes. The fabricated persons or events also had to be of little consequence and were to be revealed as false after each semester, Mr. Kelly said.
The goal of the course was to improve students’ research and analytical skills, bolster their skepticism, and have fun doing it. It exceeded his expectations, Mr. Kelly said. “It’s fair to say that no student who ever took that course is ever going to accept at first glance what they see online.”
Mr. Kelly also had misgivings. “It was hard for me as I was designing it to get over my own queasiness,” he said.
Still, the course generated news-media attention and a posting on Wikipedia—as well as condemnation. Commenters on an article about the hoaxes that ran in The Atlantic last year referred to Mr. Kelly and his students as “pond scum.”
Ethically Troubling
The course’s demise effectively occurred last fall, when Mr. Kelly opted to include the course in the university catalog. Previously, it had been a “special topics” course, a classification intended to encourage experimentation in the classroom, he said. Ideas for such experimental courses are typically evaluated informally by a department chair, he added.
Including the course in the catalog meant it would carry its own number and description, and a place in the curriculum. Inclusion also meant it had to be vetted by the department’s curriculum committee.
A significant sticking point emerged: whether the hoax could be made public. The departmental committee worried about the damage a hoax might cause to the broader public and to students whose future employers might look askance at their participation in a deliberate falsification, said Brian W. Platt, the department chair.
Committee members also were concerned that students, some of whom might have no other course option that fit on their schedules, would be forced to do something they might find ethically troubling; the hoax was worth 40 percent of the grade. Another concern, added Mr. Kelly, was whether the course breached the university’s computer-usage policy.
The committee rendered its verdict: The hoax should be presented in class only. Mr. Kelly declined, he wrote recently in his blog, explaining that it “would have sucked the life out of the course.”
He does not fault his colleagues for the decision they reached, however. “I completely get every single objection to the course,” Mr. Kelly said. “I was disappointed I would not be able to teach the class anymore. I was not disappointed in my colleagues.”
A ‘Clear Violation’?
Traditional definitions of academic freedom defend the rights of colleges to decide both what to teach and how to teach it, though questions have arisen in recent years about whether that freedom conveys to the institution or to the faculty member.
Mr. Kelly wrote on his blog that his colleagues had set “an interesting and potentially disturbing precedent ... because it says that teaching methods can be regulated in ways we would never allow when it comes to our research.” But he said in an interview that the issue is not so black and white.
Teaching strategies, in his view, exist in a gray area. “If I’d been researching hoaxes, there wouldn’t be a problem,” he said. Nor was the content of the course a concern for his colleagues. “The sticking point was about a method.”
Mr. Platt, the department chair, said that what happened to “Lying About the Past” is not an example of a breach of academic freedom, but one of historians’ collectively rendering a professional decision about a practice that made them uncomfortable.
“Mills is always pushing the envelope pedagogically, and we love that he does,” Mr. Platt said. “At the same time, we think this is an appropriate vetting process for considering whether some unusual pedagogical decisions can be reviewed.”
Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a staunch advocate of academic freedom, said a faculty member’s pedagogical philosophy should be protected unless it breaches professional ethical standards. In his view, George Mason is clearly in the wrong.
“Distributing the hoaxes for comment was fundamental to the substance of the course, and it was a clear violation of the instructor’s academic freedom to press him to eviscerate the assignment,” Mr. Nelson, a former president of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in an e-mail. “Perhaps George Mason can bar April Fool’s jokes next.”
Correction (4/3/2013, 10:30 a.m.): The original version of this article stated that T. Mills Kelly’s course violated the university’s computer-usage policy, but in fact it is not clear whether the course violated the policy. The concern was that it might. The text has been corrected.
