Robin N. Assali

Yes, he can be loud and repetetive. To up-tight puritans he might be vulgar and offensive. But this is a philosophy/human sexuality course, and this is a philosopher, that to a students great relief, brakes the mold. A brilliant mind that made the class an absolute pleasure. Many students run away when presented with the challenge of having to reason and reflect over ideas. That is why I think many general ed. students dislike a philosophy course. Assali's class is a philosophy course par excellence.

What many students complain about is that he makes it too easy. He delineates an exact process or methodology which WILL HELP you in other courses and matters of reflective thought, and this is often misunderstood as "teeling me how to think" or "telling me how to feel about issues". What I got from Assali, and seems his aim, is a simple surefire approach to discussing and analysing issues in sexuality.

His methodology for ethical discussion is profoundly original. A lot of writing but the many readings should more than help in presenting/forming ideas. Highly recommended.

NOTE: Assali had a semester of very bad health and missed many classes. Some depth and scope was lost in lectures but I still got alot out of this class.

I do enjoy a lively discussion on almost any subject. I figured human sexuality would be something to spark some good discussion - particularly the ethical aspects of it, but I was sorely disappointed in Professor Assali's class. (PHIL369 = HMSX445?) Anyway, the structure under which the issues are discussed are arbitrary, and when you question the method, he seems to take it like a personal attack. It feels more or less like he's trying to indoctrinate the entire class, persuade them to his views. I much prefer philosophy professors that allow for the students to come to conclusions of their own, even if they do not agree. Open mindedness is an essential quality of a philosopher, a quality I feel Prof. Assali lacks. Also, we could do without the sexist and suggestive comments.

I agree absolutely with "sfsugirl" who gave Professor Assali a C-. I took him a year ago for Critical Thinking and I wish I had taken someone else. He puts on an air of being friendly and helpful but unless you're young, attractive, and highly impressionable, he won't bother to really help you. I found him to be not only insincere but also arrogant and crude. He told the class a few times that he doesn't really have to be in front of the class teaching because he stands to inherit a great deal of money. He was trying to tell us with that statement that he was doing us a big favor by being there at all. The statement managed to alienate me and made him look foolish in my eyes. I found also that he tended to be lazy when it came to teaching. The class I was taking was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays he would lecture to the class and go over the textbook, which was a book that he had written. His lectures and the book were actually pretty good but I could have used more instruction from him and more discussions in groups. Unfortunately, on Thursdays, and I mean every Thursday, we would spend the entire hour and fifteen minutes in the computer lab working individually on quizes and exercises for the class. Theoretically, he was supposed to be going around the room to answer questions but the students rarely asked any. He ended up spending most of the Thursday sessions in the little office connected to the computer lab, relaxing or chatting with someone. I really thought the computer exercises should have been done at home as homework and he should have lectured and had group discussions on both days of the class. So in conclusion, if you are a dedicated student and really want to learn, don't take this teacher!

By the end of the semester I was left with a kind of icky feeling about Prof. Assali. His lecture style, including a studied "goofiness", kept bombing with the class, and so he got aggressively "goofy"-- making jokes and then bitterly commenting on the class's lack of energy or humor or whatever. It got to be weird. Oh, and the learning part...I'm no dolt but I found the lectures and (outdated) readings to be dense to the point of...OUTRAGEOUSLY boring. The kids in the class who were philosophy majors seemed to dig the wordplay Assali would engage them in-- what seemed to me like asinine nitpicky b.s. about subjects we mostly agree upon anyway. For example: Write 5 pages on How and Why Incest is Wrong. To articulate why doing it with your mom is Wrong, and in Assali's preferred stuffy language, was SOOOOO boring. Incest is wrong because it's nasty and illegal and bllaaaaaaaa for 5 pages? Anyhow: I give this class a thumbs down.

Professsor Assali was able to teach well. Specifically, the manner in which he taught students how to write as well understand their own papers was remarkable. During the semester I was in his Critical Thinking course, I found the papers that I wrote in classes I was taking simultaneously more profound in content as well as structure, as I had now been explicitally introduced to the Essay's Structure. Regarding his more inherently philisophical teachings, his rather unfortunately brief lectures in Values and Moral were enlighting. I have now taken a passionate intrest in Immanuel Kant and I would attribute Professor Assali as the one who so profundly exposed his teachings to me.

I took Sex & Morality with Prof. Assali and it turned out to be one of my favorite classes. Yes, he talks about sex a lot. Yes, he makes politically incorrect jokes. But that doesn't take away from the fact that he really wants all of his students to succeed. He has a real desire to help each of his students understand the material, and he will go over and over and over any material that is not sinking in. He is also one of the most entertaining lecturers I have ever taken a class from. He uses tons of examples to help the material make more sense. I didn't find my thoughts drifting to other things like in some of my other classes. Overall, if you're not too uptight to smile at a couple off-color jokes, you'll really learn a lot from and enjoy Prof. Assali's class.