[Themaintainers] The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Dead Man Teaching"

[Danny Spitzberg]

Tamara Kneese - who studies digital life after death - wrote "How a Dead
Professor Is Teaching a University Art History Class
<https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/dead-professor-teaching-online-class.html>"
a
couple days earlier. It seems like Bartlett's last point is actually almost
exactly what Kneese said in her article!

On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 1:43 PM Richard Wheeler <richarduwheeler at gmail.com>
wrote:

> https://community.chronicle.com/news/2479-dead-man-teaching
>
> "During one of those recent lectures, a question occurred to Ansuini that
> he wanted to follow-up on with the professor. He was eager to learn more
> about a particular example the professor had used. So he paused the video
> on his laptop and Googled the professor’s name in order to find his email —
> that seemed quicker than hunting around for the syllabus on his desktop.
> What he found instead was an obituary. At first he assumed it must be for
> someone else with the same name. In fact, no: François-Marc Gagnon, an
> art-history professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, had passed away
> in 2019 at age 83. Turns out Ansuini’s favorite new professor was dead."
>
> "As an academic himself, Yakir did wonder about the intellectual-property
> implications. Now that his father is gone, who owns the rights to that
> work? The university wasn’t quick to provide information on that score. A
> spokeswoman said professors are compensated for recording their lectures
> but didn’t offer further details (she also said that Gagnon’s biography in
> the course description would be “updated”). For instance, are they
> compensated every time the course is offered?"
>
> What a perfect "maintenance-free" setup for academic administrators: use
> lectures from dead professors without compensation to their estate, run the
> class with lowly-paid instructors and TAs who don't even realize that they
> are supporting a dead lead professor, and charge students full tuition.
>
> Richard Wheeler
> richarduwheeler at gmail.com
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