You have to admire the innovation of the faculty members at California’s college institutions.

First, one school opens up the “Marijuana Research Institution“.

Now, Hillsdale College student Jack Butler reports on on a local college intriguing new offering.

A relatively new Pasadena City College class called “Navigating Pornography” – devoted to giving students a venue to study and discuss a touchy topic in an academic setting, according to its professor – has already prompted praise and concern.

First offered last spring, the class is a for-credit elective open to all students and does not require any prerequisites. In just one year, it’s come under national scrutiny after its instructor, Professor Hugo Schwyzer, invited a porn star to speak to its students.

But Schwyzer defended Navigating Pornography in an interview with The College Fix, calling the subject matter legitimate.

“(The course) focuses on giving students tools to understand pornography as a historical and contemporary phenomenon,” Schwyzer told The College Fix. “Students today live in a porn-saturated culture and very rarely get a chance to learn about it in a safe, non-judgmental, intellectually thoughtful way.”

The course doesn’t merely consist of viewing pornography. In fact, students do not view porn inside the classroom. Instead, they watch it on their own time as homework. Assignments include journals, a research paper, and a final exam, Schwyzer explained.

Schwyzer, professor of history and gender studies at the Southern California-based community college, said the elective provides students an avenue to discuss pornography in an academic setting.

….Response to the course in the Pasadena community has been “excellent” in most respects, “save from some in the administration and the community,” according to Schwyzer.

“Students welcome it,” he adds.

Yet in an interview with The College Fix, a colleague of Schwyzer’s who teaches at the same community college called the course “absolutely appalling.” He asked not to be named, citing tension at the campus over the course, which recently prompted a wave of national controversy over its guest speakers: porn stars.

The media coverage was generated after Schwyzer invited James Deen, a porn star who graduated from Pasadena City College as Bryan Mathew Sevilla, to give a public lecture in late February. Some of Deen’s more recent films include “Don’t Tell My Wife 2,” and “Too Small To Take It All 5,” according to his filmography.