Ah, the Groves of Academe

Normally I don’t like to default to the too-easy cliches about assistant professors of sociology, but take in this one minute video, shot on an airplane two days ago, of Karen Halnon, an associate professor of sociology at Penn State, Abington, on board a flight from Nicaragua to Miami:

In one of those “you-can’t-make-this-up” stories, the Washington Post reports:

A college professor was arrested at Miami International Airport over the weekend after launching into a loud foreign policy lecture during a flight from Nicaragua. . .

“The United States has declared war on Venezuela!” a woman aboard a plane says repeatedly in the video.

The Miami New Times identified the woman as 52-year-old Karen Halnon, an associate professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University-Abington. . .

“In a democracy one must speak up and against injustice,” Halnon said in an e-mail to The Post on Tuesday after claiming she was mistreated during her arrest. “To be tortured is not democracy!”

The New Times reported that the incident occurred on a flight from Nicaragua to Miami. Halnon also lit a cigarette on the plane, the New Times reported.

“Yes, that was me, and I was actually smoking a cigarette briefly,” Hanlon told Miami’s CBS affiliate. “I took a few puffs out of it. … Every other revolutionary smokes.”

I can only imagine what her classes must be like.

Yes, in case you’re wondering, it appears she has tenure.  Then there’s this from her faculty page:

From marriage to mythology and from revenge to reconciliation, an intriguing webbing of global, inter-disciplinary, and scholarly dialogue on the vicissitudes of forgiveness, the unforgivable, apology, ritual, and transgressions against Others.

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