Is Louis Komjathy okay?
Thanks largely to discussions here on this subreddit, I've been interested in trying to move beyond the Two Books and a Vibe level of Daoist practice and learning from a teacher. I started looking around to see if there were any practical options in my part of the world (the U.S. Midwest), and I found Louis Komjathy, who I recognized from the book Dream Trippers and from some discussions here. He is offering a mix of remote classes and (I think) some in-person work up in Chicago, which is close enough that I could drive there a couple of times a year if I had a reason to.
But as I was looking around his website, I noticed that he had been until 2019 a professor out in San Diego, and now lists himself as working at "The Underground University." His website is vague about what facilitated the change of employment, but includes an "alternative bio" that reads, in part: "I died in September 2019. I was 48 years old. It wasn't a biological death; it was a social death. The death of ego and social identity. I watched everything that I was taken away." Which is a pretty dramatic statement.
So I did some more Googling, and found some articles from San Diego detailing how, following being denied a promotion to full professor, Komjathy put up signs claiming that (certain female) members of the tenure committee were "fascists" and encouraged students to boycott their classes, and, alarmingly, had slid papers with images of a sniper's crosshairs under their doors. (Some of the "fascist" posters featured the tenure committee members juxtaposed with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump admin press secretary, but as far as I've seen there's no actual ties between those professors and Sanders or Trump.) His explanation, according to the article, was:
“I wanted them to feel like what I felt like,” Komjathy told campus officers. He said the crosshairs and other threatening symbols, notes, and drawings he posted were “...supposed to be a symbolic representation of having a target on their backs and being singled out.”
This was all pretty shocking, because from what I've been able to read of Dream Trippers he seemed like an intelligent and sympathetic figure, but from the sounds of things, he doesn't seem like a great bet to trust for spiritual education at this time, you know?
I've only seen what I was able to find in a couple of hours clicking around - if there's more to the story than what was reported in the link above, I'd be interested in hearing it, since there really aren't many accredited Daoist teachers in this part of the U.S. and I'd hate to write one off if I'm missing something.
Posted May 9, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC