American Univ. Prof. Adrienne Pine breastfed her baby in class while lecturing to undergraduates.

77 PERCENT OF POLL RESPONDERS SAY ‘INAPPROPRIATE’
 
An unofficial poll taken by ABC Television Network’s Good Morning America in conjunction with the website Yahoo! that asked if readers and TV viewers thought American University Prof. Adrienne Pine acted inappropriately by breastfeeding her infant daughter while lecturing to 40 undergraduates, found that 77 percent of responders said Yes, her action was “inappropriate.”

More than 4,600 people responded to the online poll, with over 3,500 of that number voting “inappropriate” compared to just over 1,000 who said they thought breastfeeding while lecturing was acceptable.

Pine ignited a firestorm Sept. 5 when she went online to defend bringing her sick baby to class and allowing the child to crawl around the lecture hall floor, putting paper clips in her mouth and playing at electrical outlets.

When the child became cranky, Pine breastfed her in full view of the 40 students, a number of whom objected, as one undergraduate described it, to paying high tuition “to watch a professor babysit.”

In a humorless rant published on the left-leaning website CounterPunch.org, Pine — whose description in the university’s faculty profiles IDs her as a “militant medical anthropologist” — attacked the university’s student newspaper The Eagle and one of its reporters for allegedly “hounding” her and insisting on writing a story that she decreed was “not news.”

However her bullying tactics so intimidated the paper’s editor and reporters that no story was posted for more than a week, and when the newspaper finally did publish an article its tone was insipid and subdued.

In the meantime the story was reported by Voice of Baltimore and the Washington Post, followed by other national and local news media.

In its Sept. 13 edition The Eagle finally published a story, along with an apologetic editorial stating that had Pine not beat the student publication to the punch, “we may have never run a story in the first place.

“If we had,” the editor wrote, “we would have honored our promise to grant her anonymity.”

The editorial then asserted the right of a free press to report what it believes is newsworthy, vis-à-vis the value judgment of a professor of anthropology as to what constitutes a “story.”

It remains unclear why The Eagle allowed Pine to dictate terms of coverage for a legitimate news event or why she was promised anonymity.

“I was shocked and annoyed” that breastfeeding while lecturing “would be considered newsworthy,” Pine said in criticizing the audacity of the student reporter to approach her for an interview, after the student emailed her during class.

“I guess there are faculty out there who think it’s appropriate to check their BlackBerries while lecturing,” she explained.

In addition The Eagle‘s attempt to interview her constituted “threatening to create a hostile work environment for me,” she declared, “when I am already stretched to the limit of my own health and well-being as a full-time professor and single parent.”

According to various news reports, Pine, an assistant professor seeking tenure, is teaching just one class in the fall semester.
 
— Alan Z. Forman
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
READ VoB‘s INITIAL COVERAGE OF PINE’S BREASTFEEDING WHILE LECTURING  (click here)