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April 02, 2004

Count Olaf Would Be Proud

by Ron Hogan

San Francisco's Academy of Art University has apparently decided that if you've overreacted to a situation once, you might as well just keep right on doing it. I told you last week about the creative writing teacher who'd been fired for assigning her students a David Foster Wallace story without administrative approval. Well, Leah Garchik now reports that when remaining faculty member Alan Kaufman attempted to turn one of his classes into a "forum on free expression," AAU officials had bestselling author Daniel Handler stopped by campus security and ordered off the premises. (The tip comes from Ed, who promises he's about to deliver the results of his own independent reporting on the situation.) I admit, I'm no educator, but this seems like a somewhat counterintuitive way for an art school to behave, unless maybe you're trying to teach commercial artists hard lessons about compromise before releasing them to the corporate world...

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