A student-led petition at the University of California, San Diego asking the theater department to stop offering a course titled “The Films of Woody Allen” was rejected by the school’s academic senate in February.
Allen’s daughter, Dylan Farrow, has written about how Allen sexually abused her as a child. Since Farrow spoke out about the abuse, multiple actors have cut ties with Allen. His films have been criticized for their portrayal of romantic relationships between older men and younger, sometimes underage, women.
According to the petition, the class has been taught at UCSD since the 1990s by the same professor. In the most recent quarter, less than a third of the seats in the class were full. An article by Inside Higher Ed mentions the course discusses the directing, cinematography and recurring themes in Allen’s films but does not say whether the class discusses the allegations against him.
Despite low enrollment and a continuing debate on the moral implications of teaching the course, UCSD’s academic senate denied the request on the premise of academic freedom and the First Amendment.
“We conclude that cancelling or removing this or any other course for the reason that it contains the study of controversial material, or even material widely regarded as morally problematic, would undermine both the value of free inquiry and the associated rights of faculty to engage in such inquiry,” the academic senate said in a statement Feb. 16.
As of March 4, the petition had almost 23,000 signatures. It was organized by Savanah Lyon, a theater major at UCSD.
“They do not care about the statement that it makes to survivors everywhere,” Lyon said in the online petition.
In an op-ed, Lyon said she was met with unprofessionalism from professors in the theater department and provosts at UCSD. Since the academic senate’s decision, she has publicly expressed her frustration.
“Art is something that we as consumers of media get a choice in, and despite personal beliefs, there should be a moral obligation in these fields to feature artists that don’t have a history of abuse,” Lyon said in the op-ed.
