The Offender

The recording lasts two-and-a-half minutes. It begins with the voice of Michael Bonesteel, an adjunct assistant professor of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bonesteel is arguing with a student who will later label the professor a “very violent person.” At one point, the student accuses Bonesteel of suggesting that, if you’re transgender, you need to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

Bonesteel cuts him off. “I never said that,” he insists. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I am trying to be as fair about this as possible.”

The words that came from Bonesteel’s mouth, and how they were interpreted, led to an investigation by SAIC that found him guilty of harassment on the basis of gender identity and led to the cancellation of two comics-history courses he had taught for more than a decade. In protest, Bonesteel resigned in June from SAIC, writing in a letter to the dean that the atmosphere at the prestigious art school “feels more like a police state than a place where academic freedom and the open exchange of ideas is valued.”

Whether Bonesteel got what he deserved, or whether a couple of students were out to get him, goes to the heart of a debate taking place on college campuses around the country about how to balance sensitivity and openness, about which words and ideas are permissible — and which could lead to an investigation, punishment, and perhaps the end of an academic career. Is a verbal slight, even an unintentional one, an act of violence? Should potentially troubling material always be preceded by a warning? And how should an administration, caught between a furious student and a frustrated professor, referee such disputes?

The recording of the back-and-forth between Bonesteel and a student, Gabe, who asked that his last name not be used, was made last fall by another student who asked not to be named. It doesn’t capture what started the argument, but according to Bonesteel and several students, the catalyst was a book: Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (Basic Books), that was required reading in Bonesteel’s class, “Comic Book: Golden Age to Comics Code.” The book pops up on syllabi for other comics-history courses and has been widely praised. When it was published in 2004, a reviewer for The New York Times wrote that Men of Tomorrow “follows a vibrant generation of young, largely Jewish men who in the 1920’s and 30’s not only created a new industry but also wrote a new fantasy life for America to go with it.”

Gabe objected to the book during a class discussion. He said he believed it was derogatory toward Jews, pointing to the inclusion of Yiddish expressions and jokes, and he criticized Bonesteel for making the class read it. Other students defended it. The book had been on Bonesteel’s required-reading list for years, and this was the first time, he says, anyone had suggested it might be offensive.

The argument happened on the last day of the semester. By then everyone in the class was aware of the tension between Bonesteel and Gabe. Earlier in the semester, Gabe had expressed disapproval over what he felt was an overly casual mention of rape. During a class break, Bonesteel and several students were talking about a Batman graphic novel in which it’s implied that the Joker sexually assaults Batgirl. That graphic novel, Batman: The Killing Joke (DC Comics), was published in 1988 and has long been controversial. It had been in the news because a recent film adaptation had reignited discussion about the apparent rape scene.

Gabe overheard Bonesteel and the other students talking about the comic, and he complained. Accounts of what exactly was said differ. According to Bonesteel, Gabe said, “Hey, where is the trigger warning?” to which Bonesteel replied, “Really, you want a trigger warning?” Bonesteel had issued trigger warnings during his lectures in the past when graphic material was going to be discussed. He had also made clear that the comics discussed in the class, which focused on the first half of the 20th century, contained racist stereotypes and outdated labels.

But this conversation wasn’t part of a lecture, and Bonesteel didn’t think the word “rape” itself required a trigger warning.

Gabe remembers it differently. He says he didn’t use the phrase “trigger warning” but says he did let the professor know privately that he thought the discussion was inappropriate. “I asked him not to speak so loudly about rape,” Gabe says. “Not everyone is comfortable with that material.”

He didn’t appreciate Bonesteel’s response. “He gave me a really snotty ‘Yeah, sure,’ and he rolled his eyes,” Gabe says.

In a later class, when Bonesteel showed a mild illustration from a Little Lulu comic strip of the bare rear-end of a child putting on a ghost costume, he asked the class if he should have issued a trigger warning beforehand. Gabe took the aside as an insult directed at him in retaliation for objecting to the previous conversation about rape. “He was trying to make a laughingstock out of me in the classroom,” Gabe says. For Gabe, these incidents added up to an environment where he says he felt singled out and mocked.

Bonesteel says he was exasperated by the previous trigger-warning request, but was still surprised that Gabe considered it a personal jab. He also wonders whether their relationship went sour after Gabe, who is transgender, asked to write a paper on a current transgender comic artist but was told that he couldn’t because the class was focused on comics published prior to 1955. They ended up agreeing that Gabe could write about gender fluidity in George Herriman’s classic comic strip Krazy Kat.

That wasn’t the only run-in Bonesteel had that semester with a student. In another class, this one on outsider art, a transgender student filed a complaint against Bonesteel. The complaint stemmed from a class discussion about Henry Darger, a well-known outsider artist famous for drawings of what appear to be naked girls with penises and children with disembodied hands hovering over them.

Bonesteel, who turned 70 in the spring, has been writing about outsider art since the 1970s. He worked for newspapers and magazines for 25 years and considers himself a “recovering art critic.” He edited a book about Darger, Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings (Rizzoli), that was published in 2000. During the class, he raised the possibility that Darger may have been abused as a child, a theory that’s been bandied about by art scholars for years.

A student, Jos Demme, took exception. “I am also a Henry Darger fan and I had never heard that,” Demme says, referring to Darger’s possible abuse. Also, according to Demme, Bonesteel stated unequivocally that “all transsexuals were molested as children.” Demme responded by coming out as transgender to the class. “I said I was a transgender student and I hadn’t been molested,” Demme says. “That day I felt, not directly targeted, but unsafe and unsupported in the classroom.”

Bonesteel contends that he never said that. (Another student in the class, who asked not to be named, didn’t remember Bonesteel making such a claim.) Even so, he came to regret the way he had addressed that fraught topic and said so in a message to the class. “This is a controversial subject that should have been treated more delicately in my presentation,” he wrote. “I apologize for my insensitivity in discussing this issue in class.” He thanked Demme for bringing it to his attention.

Demme was not satisfied, arguing that the Darger discussion was part of a pattern of “hateful, belittling” statements Bonesteel made throughout the semester, though Demme declined to detail the additional instances. “I do think teaching those kind of ideologies to a group of porous students is violent,” Demme says. When Demme filed a complaint under Title IX, the law that prohibits discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal funds, Demme says that getting Bonesteel fired from SAIC was “my dream solution.”

(Demme, who prefers the pronoun “they,” also acknowledged filing another Title IX complaint against a different professor but did not want to discuss that case.)

The university investigated the complaint and found that Bonesteel had not violated Demme’s rights. However, Lisa Wainwright, faculty dean and vice president for academic affairs at SAIC, wrote to Bonesteel that, while the investigation had cleared him, she “would have wished for a more nuanced and thoughtful discussion of this issue.”

The institution’s decision angered Demme, who deemed it “blatant tolerance for transphobia” in a letter Demme wrote to the dean that was posted on Facebook and has since been removed. “I felt threatened and intimidated,” Demme wrote. “Now I feel abused.”

The incident with Demme was on Bonesteel’s mind when the argument with Gabe happened. And as the conversation moved from the Men of Tomorrow book to a more general discussion about what is and isn’t offensive, Bonesteel mentioned that he had had a complaint from a student in another class. He did not mention the student’s name, nor did he go into detail about the incident, but he used it as an example of how someone can offend without meaning to.

“It doesn’t mean that everyone who comes here is going to be completely transgender aware,” Bonesteel can be heard saying on the recording. “So I’m just saying that, inevitably, there’s going to be disappointments in this area.”

Bonesteel saw his statement as a plea for understanding. Gabe saw it as a declaration that the professor wouldn’t even make an effort to be sensitive, and that students would just have to accept his failings.

It also bothered Gabe that a transgender student in another class was mentioned. He believed that Bonesteel was announcing that professors had carte blanche to offend because of their age and credentials. “He was saying they were the ultimate pinnacle of knowledge and no one had any right to call out a professor,” Gabe says. “He said they are from a different time and not expected to learn.”

On the recording, other students jump in to offer their takes. One springs to Bonesteel’s defense: “He’s done more than most teachers to change himself and learn,” the student says. Another argues that “it’s really more about reaching out to transgender students and, like, really getting their thoughts.”

“I agree,” Bonesteel can be heard saying.

Several students interviewed for this article requested that their names not be used. One student asked to receive an assurance, in writing, that she wouldn’t be named. “I don’t want anyone to hate me if I take [Bonesteel’s] side,” she said. Another student said Bonesteel “never raised his voice in class” until that argument. “I remember him saying, ‘I’m making the best strides forward and to learn, and to move on from this,’” he said. That student called Gabe’s objections “over the top.”

Another student, however, was more sympathetic to Gabe, though he also saw Bonesteel’s perspective. Joseph van Overbeek didn’t think Bonesteel was purposely trying to offend Gabe or any other student. “He’s a 70-year-old liberal,” van Overbeek says. “He expressed this sincere concern about creating a safe queer environment.” Van Overbeek recalls that, after Donald Trump’s election, he wrote to Bonesteel and said he was feeling too upset to attend the next class. Bonesteel wrote back that he and other faculty members “are part of a community that’s here to protect you,” van Overbeek remembered, and told the student not to worry about being absent.

Still, van Overbeek thinks Gabe had cause to complain. “He was asking Gabe to accept abuse,” van Overbeek says. “I still like Michael and I believe he wants to do the right thing, but I think he wasn’t exactly able to perceive that what he was saying is unacceptable.”

Another member of the class who witnessed the argument, Matt Casanovas, said that one time when Bonesteel left the room he overheard Gabe say that he had been emailing administrators and trying to get the professor fired. “It was kind of like he had a grudge against him through the whole class, like he was trying to find a smoking gun,” says Casanovas. “It was so bizarre.”

Gabe denied saying that, and he denied nursing a grudge against Bonesteel. “Why would I waste my time and effort during finals to go after some crummy old white man?” he says.

The argument led to a second university investigation. The results of that investigation were spelled out in another letter from Wainwright, the dean, to Bonesteel. She wrote in March that he had been found guilty of harassment for “ridiculing the student when they requested trigger warnings” and “associating the student generally with a trans student in another class with whom you were having difficulties.”

(He was found innocent of the accusation that he had consistently used the wrong pronoun to refer to transgender students. Bonesteel acknowledged sometimes getting pronouns mixed up: “I have 27 students and it’s hard to remember names, much less pronouns,” he says.)

The dean wrote that Bonesteel would be required to take a training course on discrimination and harassment and would have to meet with SAIC’s director of academic affairs for diversity and inclusion. He was also told that he would not be offered a multiyear contract, as he had received in the past, but that he might be given a one-year contract once he “demonstrated an ability to address issues related to identity, including gender identity, appropriately.”

Bonesteel was willing to take the training course. He believed there were things he could have handled better. He regretted losing his temper. He wished he had anticipated some of the potentially offensive material and steered around certain topics more gracefully. Even before the investigation was completed, he had met on his own with a diversity adviser at the school to talk about how to handle such situations in the future.

But there was more. When he met with Wainwright, the dean, Bonesteel was told that he would no longer be able to teach his two history of comics courses, or a third course on international comics he had recently started teaching. That came as a blow. The comics-history courses were full every semester and he routinely had to turn away a dozen or more students. Now the courses wouldn’t be offered at all. Wainwright said he could still teach his outsider-art class, though he would have to offer a revised reading list that would be determined in consultation with the department chairman.

Bonesteel decided to resign. Without his comics classes, he no longer had enough hours to be eligible for health insurance through the university. Plus, as he wrote in his resignation letter, he felt that the “micromanagement” of his outsider-art class was “undermining and insulting.”

Wainwright declined an interview, citing a policy against discussing personnel matters, but in a written statement she denied that Bonesteel’s academic freedom had been violated. “This simply is not the case, and frankly, would be anathema to our pedagogy,” the statement said. “Individual expression is at the core of SAIC’s mission.” A spokeswoman for the school, Bree Witt, amplified that sentiment, saying that “it’s not our practice to tell faculty members what they can and can’t include.” An email exchange between Bonesteel and Michael Golec, the chairman of art history, supports Bonesteel’s claim that he was asked to change his reading list after the meeting with the dean. (Golec declined an interview request.)

Bonesteel’s resignation attracted some minor news attention, though nothing like the national media circus prompted by the recent campus shutdown at Evergreen State College over its so-called Day of Absence. Bonesteel gave an interview to Raw Vision, a magazine devoted to outsider art where he is a contributor, and he also spoke to the Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly newspaper. In the online comments on the Reader article, some sided with the students, calling Bonesteel a “relic of the 80s academia scene.” A commenter with the handle “No Patience for Old White Men,” encouraged the professor to “Take your white cisgendered nonsense and get out.”

Others chastised the students for having “incredibly thin skin” and the administration for “star-chamber injustice.” A commenter with the handle “MAGA,” had a different take, writing: “I love it when the leftists eat their own.”

Bonesteel says he isn’t angry at the students who complained. He seems mostly baffled, even now, after ruminating on it for months. Did he really create a hostile environment despite what he believed was a genuine effort at sensitivity? Was he merely, as he once put it, an “easy target” for a kind of free-floating animus? Why did the administration, in his mind, choose to escalate the conflict rather than seek to resolve it?

He wishes he could have sat down with those students and perhaps a mediator from SAIC. Maybe he could have held on to his job, maybe not, but at least he could have understood what he did wrong. “The whole ordeal was like a Kafkaesque inquisition that lasted for six months. I was never able to face my accusers, nor was I shown written copies of their complaints,” he says. “In my opinion, I was guilty until proven innocent.”

For his part, Gabe, the student whose complaint led to Bonesteel’s resignation, says he was uncomfortable with some aspects of the administration’s decision. He didn’t think the word “harassment” described what had gone on. And he has mixed emotions about the fact that Bonesteel’s history of comics courses would no longer be offered. “He was a good teacher, and knowledgeable, and yet so many people are knowledgeable,” says Gabe. “I feel bad that he decided to leave, but I do feel safer.”

Tom Bartlett is a senior writer at The Chronicle.