Audrey Truschke, a ‘historian’, has garnered quite a bit of notoriety in India in recent years due to her fondness for the Mughal tyrant Aurangzeb. She has been the subject of abject criticism on social media for her penchant towards whitewashing the crimes of the barbarian. All this time she has brushed all such criticism under the carpet by claiming that she is a ‘historian’ and pretending that it somehow absolves her apologia for a genocidal maniac.
It now appears that its not only people on social media that are not too fond of her. Her students do not appear to like her too much either. She is a professor at the History Department of the Rutgers State University in New Jersey. She has a rating of 1.7 out of 5 at the Rate My Professors website where students can rate the professors they take classes of. Rate My Professors is a website that was founded in 1999 that allows college and university students to rate professors and campuses of American, Canadian and British institutions.
The description section of the website says, “Rate My Professors is the largest online destination for professor ratings. Users have added more than 19 million ratings, 1.7 million professors and over 7,500 schools to Rate My Professors. User-generated content makes Rate My Professors the highest trafficked site for quickly researching and rating professors, colleges and universities across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.”
It adds, “Rate My Professors is built for college students. Choosing the best courses and professors is a rite of passage for every student, and connecting with peers on the site has become a key way for millions of students to navigate this process. The site does what students have been doing forever – checking in with each other – their friends, their brothers, their sisters, their classmates – to figure out who’s a great professor and who’s one you might want to avoid.” The website has also won a Webby Award in the ratings category.
One of the ‘1’ rating Audrey Truschke received on the platform says, “She doesn’t know the material. She just gives you “busy work”. A very terrible teacher. She should rather have become an activist rather than a teacher. She made a fun subject into a miserable course. She doesn’t respect other points of view. TL:DR: If I had to take the class again, I would rather drop out of university.”
“Horrible teacher ever, very annoying and unhelpful. Very unclear. Her ego gets hurt if u ask her a question she doesn’t know. Always ready to play women’s card Verdict : she sucks,” says another. One student went so far as to remark, “I didnt think a history class would be this bad. Avoid at all costs”.
Another student said that her attitude towards students is a “nightmare”. “She doesn’t answer questions or she says “we’ll get to that later” and then never gets to it. Avoid at all costs,” the student said. There was another student who commented along similar lines. “DO NOT TAKE HER CLASS. YOU DO NOT LEARN ANYTHING FROM HER. We asked her questions during class and every time she was saying “I’ll get back to you.” If that is the case, why do you pay you? Such a crappy professor.”
There were one or two who did appreciate her skills, of course. One such student remarked, “If you are looking to complete your history requirement take her because her by attending her lectures you will really learn something. Attendance and participation are mandatory because it worths 35% of your final grade. Throughout the semester we just got quizzes before exams. There are papers to write but not long only 1 or 2 pages. Easy grader.”
However, in the end, only 20% of the students said that they would take her classes again. There were 21 student ratings in total which gave her a score of 1.7 out of 5.
