The End of Men (In Literature)

Article here. Excerpt:

'The undergraduate course "Men in Literature" was taught eight times from 2005 to 2015 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. It drew healthy enrollments and was reviewed favorably by a large majority of the students who took it. In 2010, the course was formally approved by the college curriculum committee as an addition to the offerings of the humanities department.

But in fall 2013, trouble began—not yet for "Men in Literature," but for the man who devised and taught it, tenured English professor and South African expatriate Dennis Gouws. He had become interested in the emerging field of "men's studies," and had helped to found a Springfield College men's group. The group created a Facebook page that irritated some campus feminists. Gouws had gone further by replying to the proliferation of feminist anti-rape posters on his colleagues' office doors. He put on his own office door flyers that presented statistics on rape that contradicted the widespread claim that one in five women are raped during their undergraduate years. His materials were torn down by a departmental colleague, and later, his door was vandalized.

Gouws was called to a meeting by Springfield's director of human resources and subjected to a harangue by a group of college officials. At the meeting one of the college officials complained that the posters created a "hostile environment," and the dean of his college called the organizations that had produced the flyer "a hate group." Thus began Springfield College's campaign to suppress Professor Gouws's freedom of expression on the topic of how men are treated in contemporary higher education.'