Professor Lisa Guenther is plenty familiar with difficult and controversial subject matter — she's been facilitating a philosophy discussion group at a maximum security prison, she's organized local teach-ins on mass incarceration and the death penalty, and last year she pissed off Fox News. When national conservative media outlets learned about a course she would be teaching at Vanderbilt this semester — Police Violence and Mass Incarceration — they sounded the alarm, referring to the class as a "cop-hating course" and labeling Guenther "anti-cop."
What was it like to be noticed by places like Fox News and The Daily Caller for the course you're teaching now?
That actually did come as a surprise, because I've been teaching courses on mass incarceration for a number of years. This contemporary philosophy class that I teach, I do a different topic every year. So one year it was biopolitics, and we looked at slavery, mass incarceration and torture. These are not uncontroversial issues. It was the word "police" against the word "violence" in this moment that just really set people off.
It was ... annoying? But interesting, too. Because I got all kinds of unsolicited emails from people calling me a "cop-hater" and telling me what I need to know about them, without them knowing anything about me or, really, about the course, just the title.
We saw demonstrations here, and the police got a lot of positive press nationally for their response. Do you think that was warranted?
Well, I participated in those protests and I appreciated not being tear-gassed [laughs]. But that should be our standard, that should not be above and beyond like, "Oh my God, the police protected the right of citizens to free speech." It was great that they shut down the highway so that we didn't have to do that. That was all very nice. But I think, again, a broader systematic look at what is going on is warranted.
What else are you interested in right now?
Well, the other course I'm teaching is phenomenology, which is very challenging. It's not abstract in a way, because it's about starting with your lived experience and reflecting on the structures that make that experience possible and meaningful. In terms of my research, I'm working on lethal injection. I facilitate this discussion group with men who are on death row. And so I've been researching all of the weird and twisted tensions between states that want to execute people, pharmaceutical companies banning the use of their products in execution, and the way that these issues are going through the courts. And some of the ethical and political issues around the death penalty.
Read more of this interview on our news blog, Pith in the Wind.
More From the 2015 People Issue
The Textile Designer: Andra Eggleston / The Transformer: Bill Schleicher / The Chief: Steve Anderson / The Bookseller: Yusef Harris / The Producer: Dave Cobb / The Rookie: Filip Forsberg / The Pedal Steel-Playing Pilot: Joshua Motohashi / The Weathermen: David Drobny & Will Minkoff / The Punk Neuroscientist: Kale Edmiston / The Kitchen Artist: Karla Ruiz / The Metalhead: Kayla Phillips / The Image Master: kogonada / The Bartender: Lee Parrish / The Professor: Lisa Guenther / The Advocate: Marisa Richmond / The Captains: Kellie Hurst & Regina Durkan / The Painter: Michael Shane Neal / The Tunesmith: Shane McAnally
