Hillel AronIt's been said that Los Angeles has its share, perhaps more than its share, of attractive people. And so it stands to reason that some of them might be teaching in our 67 or so colleges and universities, assigning us homework, grading our papers, asking to see us during their office hours, and so forth.
Here they are, the 10 hottest professors teaching in Los Angeles (#10 being the person we'd have the most moxie to approach, #1 the least). And yes, James Franco is daunting (spoiler alert).
Please note: the methodologies of this list were perfectly scientific, and its results are final and not up for dispute.
JohannaBlakley at TED
Dr. Johanna Blakley is managing director of research at the Norman Lear Center at USC. She's also smoking hot, and has this great TED talk, where she argues that forms of art should be treated more like fashion, where copying other peoples' works is widely accepted and has, itself, become an art form. I found her so convincing that this entire post is plagiarized! (Just kidding.)
Tom Wiscombe
Multiple sources (ie, this reporter's Facebook friends) say that Southern California Institute of Architecture, or Sci Arc as it's known by architecture nerds everywhere, is “stacked” with smoking hot professors. It was hard to choose just one, but we decided to go with the bedroom eyes of Tom Wiscombe (despite his soul patch). How does anyone at Sci Arc get anything done? Do students not just sit around checking out their professors all day?
8. Ebony Utley, Cal State Long Beach
Ebony Utley
Her illustration published at academia.edu says it all: heavy cleavage in a hot pink dress.
Utley is sort of one of those professional speaker/media-appearer types — with the presumptuously named website The Utley Experience — but that doesn't mean she's not a real professor. Her reviews on RateMyProfessors.com note that her tests are next-to-impossible. She's also author of “Rap and Religion: Understanding the Gangsta's God” — and yes, a total babe.
7. Aaron Smith, Art Center College of Design*
Aaron Smith
Not only a painter of great beards and mustaches but a wearer of great beards and mustaches, the L.A. Times once wrote of Smith: “Between his hair, his gray smock and the carved stone base he sits on, he looks like he belongs to another era.” An era, perhaps, of dreamy, hipster art teachers who contribute work to projects like Bears, Illustrated.
6. Dahlia Schweitzer, Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM, part-time)
Dahlia Schweitzer
Schweitzer's LinkedIn says it all: “I am a writer, thinker, curator, educator, and performer focused on media, identity, sexuality, decay, and reinvention.” Though not fond of the words “sexuality” and “decay” placed in such proximity, we have to admit, we've never had a professor who looks quite like Schweitzer. Or has photographs of herself like Schweitzer's. Or has written a work of “erotic fiction” entitled “Lovergirl,” which informs readers of five rules for living like a “bad girl”: “no skirt too short,” “no drink too strong, and “no act too forbidden.” Ok then!
John O. Dabiri; Credit: Kevin Scanlon
Dr. Dabiri is the brilliant chair of faculty and a full professor over at Caltech Biological Propulsion Lab, where the 30-something propels all biologically female students to fall madly in love with his knowledge of jellyfish and his rock-hard body. He was profiled on May 15, 2013 in L.A. Weekly's People issue, where he told us that when he informed a pretty new acquaintance (who later became his wife) that he worked at Caltech, she thought he said “Caltrans” — because how often does somebody who looks like this end up at Caltech?
Dr. Francesca Leardini (and it takes all the restraint this reporter has to not make a “let's play doctor” joke) teaches Italian Studies at USC.
She's also a professional lyricist and a translator (she translated Jared Diamond's bestseller “Collapse” into Italian), not to mention she's a serious scholar who got a 4.0 from UCLA where she pulled down her PhD.
At USC, she sometimes teaches a class called “Love in Italian Literature.” In Italian. In the afternoon.
Ric Rader; Credit: UCLA
Hey, girl. I'm Professor Rader. You can call me Ric. With a “c.” I mean, with no “k.” That's right, I teach Classics. You know, Aeschylus. Sophocles. Euripides. All those Greek dudes. Murder. Incest. The very notions of free will and determinism. Amor Vinvit Omnia. You like that? That's fucking Latin. Yeah. That's right. That's good. No, say it slower.
Aimee Bender
Disclosure: this reporter took two classes with Aimee Bender back in the good old days of unbridled drug use undergraduate school. We all had crushes on her – the men, the women. Half of the inanimate objects in the classroom had a thing for Bender, who on top of being a quiet, almost demure beauty, is also easily one of the best fiction writers living in L.A. (Check out “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt“).
Credit: Siran Babayan
Franco, the professionally handsome star of screen and screen, is a renaissance man — we know this because NPR insists upon it. Not only has he appeared in numerous films and General Hospital, he's written a not-small number of books, including one of short stories and one of poems due out next year. Oh, and in his spare time he teaches a film class at USC and one on screenwriting at UCLA, where he had students watch Jersey Shore at one point, and then turned the whole thing into like a reality show for the internet? Seriously?
*Corrected at 11:15 a.m. September 18 to Art Center College of Design.
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