As the son of an eccentric college teacher myself, there are few things I like better than a crazy professor story. In the past, we’ve covered everything from Northwestern’s infamous f*cksaw demonstration to the guy suing James Franco for being a bully. Today, we have a story out of Columbia (me and Franco’s grad school alma mater, in case I haven’t mentioned that 12 thousand times already), where physics teacher Emlyn Hughes “stripped down to his underwear in front of images of 9/11 and Hitler,” during his class for first-year undergrads (with video, below). Your move, Professor Franco.

As first-year students filed into the lecture hall for their Frontiers of Science class, all of the lights were off, except for two spotlights on stage where Hughes was sitting. With Lil Wayne’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” playing in the background, Hughes stripped down to his underwear, then proceeded to change into a black T-shirt and pants. Afterwards, he sat down on the chair, hugging his knees in a fetal position.

Then, as a jumbled video that included footage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers on 9/11 continued to play on the screen, two figures dressed in black came on stage with long swords. One of them proceeded to chop a stuffed animal in half on a stool.

The video on screen also showed footage of Osama Bin Laden and battles from World War II.

After the episode, students said that Hughes began teaching the rest of the lecture on quantum mechanics as though nothing had happened. He did, however, wear dark sunglasses and keep his hood up for the entire lecture. [ColumbiaSpectator]

I like to imagine that  Professor Hughes came up with this lesson plan only after a long soul-searching session in front of the bathroom mirror, in which he repeatedly slammed his palms on the counter, screaming “HOW CAN I REACH THESE KEEDS!”

After the music stopped, Hughes told the students, “In order to learn quantum mechanics, you have to strip to your raw, erase all the garbage from your brain, and start over again.” [HuffPo]

Ooohhh, I get it now. And who better to “erase all the garbage” than Hitler, right? Wait, let me start over…

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Remember A Beautiful Mind? That movie where Russell Crowe played a schizophrenic math professor who triumphantly overcame his paranoid delusions to bang Jennifer Connelly? Well, it turns out that the real-life version involves more meth, and more stripping butt naked during class and getting arrested. See, that’s the kind of schizophrenia most of us are used to. (Yes, I know A Beautiful Mind was already based on a true story, shut up).

A Michigan State University professor was taken into protective custody after students say he went on a naked rampage in the middle of class.
“My math teacher just stripped naked during class and was arrested! Go MSU!” one student wrote on Reddit, posting a blurry cell phone snap of a nude man sitting in the school hallway.
Students identified the professor on social media as John McCarthy, but the university wouldn’t confirm the man’s identity.
Police got a call Monday afternoon “about a man in the Michigan State University Engineering Building shouting in the hallway,” according to a statement posted on MSU’s website.
Students described the man as an “eccentric” mathematics professor who “smoked meth” and never seemed quite right.

So smoking meth is considered “eccentric.” God, I miss college.

“Halfway through class he started screaming at us, swearing left and right,” one student wrote on Reddit. “He then started slamming his hands on the window and pressing his face against it, still screaming. Eventually he walked out and down the hallway to the end, all while screaming. He then then came back into the classroom and took off his clothes, except for his socks.”

Those poor kids, damn teacher pulled a Richie Tenenbaum on them! Needle in the Haaaaaay….

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I’ve always been a big Pixar supporter (I DON’T CARE WHO I PISS OFF BY SAYIN’ I LOVE WALL-E, I DIDN’T GET WHERE I AM BY BEIN’ AFRAID OF CONTROVERSY), but after a couple of Cars movies and Brave looking like the most uninspired of female-protagonist plots (I didn’t get to go to my press screening so I can’t confirm this yet), you wonder if the brand has lost its luster. Well today brings us the trailer for Disney/Pixar’s Monsters University, the prequel to 2001′s Monsters Inc, in case you always wondered where the monsters matriculated before they started their LLC. I never saw the original, but it seems like if it was any good someone would’ve forced me to watch it by now. It’s like Toy Story with monsters, right? Anyway, the big blue bear guy and the walking eyeball are college roommates in this one.

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James Franco released the trailer for his possible web series, Undergrads, cryptically and with little fanfare on JamesFrancoTV, so it’s a little hard to tell yet just how much and how deeply we’re being dicknosed. What we do know is that there’s a trailer, which Franco introduced by saying “My new show #UNDERGRADS.”

The trailer says it plays Thursdays at 8pm (on the web, presumably), and it shows college kids drinking and getting laid, and talking about drinking and getting laid, set to montage editing and pop music. Basically, every show on MTV. But knowing James Franco, it will probably also be a proto-meta, hyper-autobiographical pseudo-meditation on the very nature of self-referentiality, invoking interrelational aestheticism and an inclusion of the viewer vis a vis the viewed in a Nicolas Bourriaudian cross examination of patriarchal subjectivity. But I mean, that’s just a guess.

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Students and teachers at Bilgi University in Constantinople Istanbul are protesting the firing of three film professors after it was discovered that they allowed a student to film a porno as his thesis. The student, Deniz Ozgun, told his professors that his intention was to show that pornographic films “are also professional productions which simulate the look of an amateur, individual and/or homemade movies” and his professors agreed under the stipulation that he provide a “stronger intellectual point.” And he failed.

Ozgun eventually received a passing grade for the semester and he graduated, but he has now gone into hiding because of the scandal. Meanwhile, the professors’ peers are fighting for their reinstatement under the anthem of educational freedom. I think the dudes should get their jobs back just because they sound pretty cool. But to each his own.

Hey hey, ho ho, this penis party has got to stay, AOL News…

“Our main issue for the moment is problem of the academic freedom and civilized ways of dealing with abuses,” Nesin said. “Academic freedom is not about being allowed to drink coffee in one’s office. It is about being able to do research and to work on controversial issues. Academic freedom encompasses also possible judgment errors and mistakes.”

And academic freedom is also about letting a student showcase his ability to prove that the reverse-cowgirl-to-London-Bridge-to-piledriver can be featured in a professional manner.

But I think it’s clear that this film lacked maturity and the very professional nature that Deniz promised his professors because it only had two people. I’m sorry, but if my college professors gave me permission to make a porn, that thing is going to have at least six girls, some fireworks, an old man yelling obscenities, two Amish teenagers building a house around them, an oversized mouse trap with an autographed copy of Disorderlies in the middle, a piñata filled with scorpions and a velvet portrait of Don Swayze. A-f*cking-plus, son.