How to succeed as a college professor in three easy steps:

1. Make inflammatory remarks in your classroom about the newly elected president and vice president that have nothing to do with the subject matter you're supposed to be teaching. Throwing around the phrases "act of terrorism,"  "white supremacist" and "anti-gay" will really help.

2. Complain loudly about death threats after a student in your classroom turns out to have videotaped you making those remarks–and the college will promptly suspend the student in question.

3. Get voted "faculty member of the year" by your fellow profs.

Isn't college teaching grand? It's been triumph to triumph for Olga Perez Stable Cox, a psychology professor at Orange Coast College, a public community college in Southern California, who apparently decided a week after last November's presidential election that the classes she teaches in human sexuality needed a dose of left-leaning politics. As the Orange County Register reported:

The controversy began when Cox opened her three human sexuality classes on Nov. 15 and 16 by talking about the election. The videos that went viral were taken during the evening class on Nov. 15.

The first clip opens with her referring to someone as a “white supremacist.” Students said she was referring to Trump. She said she doesn’t remember.

Why bring up the election in a human sexuality class?

“It was just a few moments to acknowledge an experience most of us were having,” Cox said.

Cox said it was relevant because many students had earlier approached her and expressed fears of what a Trump presidency would mean to gays, Latinos and other minorities – a fear she said she shares “as a woman, as a Latina, as a lesbian, as a refugee."

Caleb O'Neil, a freshman in one of those classes, began taping Cox right after her harangue began. His tape, posted in December by Orange Coast's College Republicans,  included the following remarks by Cox:

''…white supremacist and a vice president that is one of the most anti-gay humans in this country. And so we are in for a difficult time but again I do believe that we can get past that. Our nation is divided, we have been assaulted, it’s an act of terrorism…."

Furthermore, according to the Register:

Cox asked students to stand up and “show the rest of the class who to watch out for and protect yourself from,” according to Tanner Webb of Huntington Beach, one of two students not affiliated with the College Republicans who stepped forward last month to say Cox asked Trump supporters to identify themselves.

“I think Mrs. Cox is a good teacher when teaching the curriculum and I have enjoyed her class,” said Webb, who described himself as apolitical. Webb was in a different class than the one that was videotaped, but in his session, Cox “continually bashed on Trump supporters, belittling them and making it seem like every person who voted for Trump was an LGBT community hating white supremacist.”

Cox denies it.

“I never did that.”

“What I said was, for those of you who are happy that your candidate won, celebrate. Stand up, cheer. Whatever. It was generic. It wasn’t stand up now. It wasn’t that at all. That didn’t happen.”

So–who got punished in this fracas involving a professor wasting taxpayer money to push her private political agenda? Not Cox, for sure, who said she'd had to leave town for a week what with all the death threats she was receiving over the videos. Instead Orange Coast administrators promptly suspended O'Neil for two terms for illegally recording Cox and also ordered him to write a three-page letter of apology to her as a condition to being readmitted.

Fortunately for O'Neil, after a huge amount of public outcry, Orange Coast's board of trustees rescinded the suspension in February and he's back in class.

But the professoriate at Orange Coast has made sure that the actual victor in this battle will be Cox, bestowing on her its top faculty honor, Colleague of the Year, which would have made her Orange Coast's commencement speaker. (She has prudently decided not to accept that particular part of the honor.)

Wow! From getting to blast Trump in your classroom to practically being the commencement speaker! As I said, isn't college teaching grand?