Take This Class: It’s a Scandal! It’s an Outrage!

Lizzie Borden, Marion Barry, Jack Kevorkian, Tammy Faye Bakker, Tonya Harding. It could be the world’s most unlikely answer to “Who would you have over for dinner, dead or alive.” Or the eyebrow-raising list represents a chance for a group of Gen Z-ers to learn about the national soap operas that happened long (or not so long) before they were born. 

In “Scandal: Exposing Corruption, Injustice and Vice in America,” Mark Feldstein, Richard Eaton Chair of Broadcast Journalism, takes University of Maryland students through a journalistic history of American brouhahas, exploring how the media has played a role in exposing and covering the tawdry to-dos that have titillated the American public. 

The course “looks at the sociology and anthropology of scandal, and the role it plays in society, and what that tells us about our values and shifting norms over time,” said Feldstein. “In many ways, the history of scandal in America is a history of America.”

He begins the course with some early American controversies: the Salem witch trials, Alexander Hamilton’s extramarital relationship and the Trail of Tears. Students move through the centuries, learning about media coverage of corrupt New York politician Boss Tweed, accused ax murderer Lizzie Borden, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the communist Red Scare, up through Watergate, disgraced former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair and accusations of sexual misconduct against Donald Trump.

The class was born out of Feldstein’s experiences as a journalist. Over 20 years as an on-air investigative correspondent, he covered police corruption, Barry’s drug use, toxic waste dumping and more. He won two Peabody Awards, one for his coverage of the kidnapping, abuse and enslavement of migrant workers by labor contractors, and another for exposing an unlicensed doctor performing unsafe abortions. He also published the paper “Spies, Murder, and the Mafia: Exposing a Scandalous Cold War Conspiracy” in the journal Scandalogy.

The changing way a culture views scandals reflects changing morals, Feldstein said. In late-17th-century Massachusetts, the primary outrage was that witches might be walking among God-fearing folks; today, the scandal is that women were hanged for the absurd charge of being in league with the devil. 

For students, the course is a deep dive into historical moments they may be familiar with only through memes or recreations in film and television. One assignment asks each student to take on the role of a person involved in the fallout from former President Bill Clinton’s dalliance with a White House intern, and act it out in class. Logre Abdis ’28, who took the course last semester, said the experience taught her that “it was so much more than just an affair.”

The course has also helped Abdis contextualize new scandals as they pop up. At the beginning of last semester, she said, the internet was abuzz over a couple whose extramarital affair was exposed at a Coldplay concert. By the end of the semester, she said, no one really talked about them anymore.

“I think about scandals a lot more critically now, if it’s being overblown or if it’s worth our attention,” she said.