Kumar Goes To West Philly

Famed actor Kal Penn, best known for playing a stoner in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, has begun teaching his class at the University of Pennsylvania. Yes, indeed, Kumar is now teaching at Penn. One can assume St. Joseph’s hiring of Joe Lunardi to teach Advanced Bracketology is not far behind.

Penn, whose name is actually Kalpen Modi, is an adjunct professor for this semester only in a class called ASAM 109: Asian Americans in the Media. And, uh, he seems pretty on the ball.

“I would love for them to independently think about imagery beyond the concept of race - to be able to look at and deconstruct certain images that we’re taught to think of in a certain context and understand why they’re so significant,” he said. “We all watch movies, and there’s a significance to those movies beyond entertainment that I hope the students are able to recognize after this class.”

Naturally, the students will be viewing Harold & Kumar for the class. If things work out for me, one day I will be teaching a class at Penn showing the same film, along with the entire Cheech & Chong series, How High and that scene from Scary Movie 2 where the giant pot plant smokes one of the Wayans brothers. Just ‘cuz, you know, it’d be pretty cool to teach a class titled Marijuana & Cinema at an Ivy League school.

Prof. Kumar calls class into session [Daily Pennsylvanian]
[Photo via DP/Matt "Buddy" Cianfrani]

Popular Stoner Comedy Hero To Teach At Popular Cocaine-Fueled Ivy League University

Are you wondering what $40,000 worth of education pays for these days? Well, two things: 1) A concert with the hottest acts of 1998 and 2) A class taught by one-half of the famed stoner duo Harold & Kumar. (If you’d like to read this story in a source that refers to Penn as “Ivy League basketball powerhouse,” you can click right here.)

As far as I can tell, today’s paper is not the Daily Pennsylvanian’s annual joke issue.

Kal Penn, better known as Kumar from Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, has agreed to teach two Asian American studies classes at the University of Pennsylvania next year. Penn will instruct Images of Asian Americans in the Media and a small class, Contemporary American Teen Films. The latter will surely have Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans clamoring to get in, as it sounds like a course where you could get away writing a 15-page paper on the use of flutes in human orifices in the American Pie series.

Penn has also been in such incredible films as Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj and Son of the Mask. His work will go well with Penn’s other new professor, Harold co-star John Cho, who will be teaching a survey course titled MILFs I Have Known next fall.

Oh, and the skinny guy from Road Trip has a class, too.

Kal Penn to teach at Penn in spring ‘08 [Daily Pennsylvanian]