Dissident Prof was back in the pages of Townhall this week and was heartened to see that her readers followed and enjoyed her article about the Center for American Progress's piggybacking onto the Tea Party's attention to the founding fathers and the Constitution, but by devious means.
Despite the fact that the editors had left off the introductory material-- "Note to readers: This is a dispatch from the Resistance to the Re-Education of America from Dissident Prof, sometimes known as Mary Grabar, who is now bunkered at www.dissidentprof.com. Receive regular dispatches by going to this location"--Townhall readers commented and subscribed. You guys are smart.
This week, Dissident Prof is happy to introduce a new faculty member, English Professor Malcolm Allen, from the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley, who uses his British wit (and spelling) to lampoon the idea of safe spaces on campus. Another professor from an undisclosed location in the Midwest reports on one of his places of employment. The college announced their "Coming Out" event, where "speakers will come and share experiences surrounding their coming out," and detailing their "struggles, challenges, support, acceptance, love, or any other circumstance encountered in their journey." The organizer promised a "magical and inspiring experience!"
We at Dissident Prof hope to make your experience "magical and inspiring" too. We hope more faculty members will see DissidentProf as a “safe space” for conservatives.
Another safe space for conservative college students has emerged online, quite logically, www.collegeconservative.com. The first issue began with a plaintive post by a young lady who had suffered under the tutelage of Bruce Spang, "poet laureate," of Portland, Maine. Christine Roussell writes, in her post, "Indoctrination Story":
Sophomore English has the distinction of being the first class of mine to have a teacher use the word “f–k,” openly push propaganda on his students, and inform his students that the only reason for their intelligence was due to their family’s wealth. It was also the first class where I ever received a letter from a teacher telling me that I was not only a poor writer, but also naïve due to my pro-life views (thankfully, this remains the only class where that has happened).
Dissident Prof was also quite impressed by the collaborative effort of Luke Stibbs and Kevin Reagan in their farewell address to Representative Barney Frank. Dissident Prof is quite skeptical of "collaborative projects," seeing them as just exercises in group think, but in this case, it was probably necessary. With the long list of Frank's malfeasances, one team member was needed probably just to do the research. Anyway, in "Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow" the Dissident Prof approvingly detects a budding rhetorical talent for subtle snark.
Another bit of hope comes in the form of a movie project on Whittaker Chambers by Mark Judge, who writes, in the Daily Caller, "If liberal educators have their way, in 50 years no kid will know who Whittaker Chambers was. Actually, make that in 20 years. Or 10."
Actually, most of my college students do not know who Whittaker Chambers was, and these are not the same kind of students I had at Clayton State University, who, thanks, to Atlanta area public schools, had not heard of communism.
Most students, not surprisingly, are unprepared for the latest iteration of communist subversion called Occupy Wall Street.
At UC-Davis, English professor Nathan Brown is a rock star revolutionary leader to students. You can read about some of his efforts at Accuracy in Media.
Many professors take a more sanguine look at the sudden interest in camping and the great outdoors. Dennis Plane, Associate Professor of Politics at Juanita University, dismisses "Tent Hysteria." He philosophizes in Inside Higher Ed, comparing the current global, Soros-led anarchist movement to his university's tradition of student tenting as they wait to buy tickets to the "holiday celebration known as Madrigal." Leaning back he expounds,
As it turns out, the most exciting part of Madrigal is the ritual of tenting that precedes it, which is replete with zany ceremonies and harmless tomfoolery.
Students across the country are also setting up tents on their campus quads, but their reasons are not nearly as quaint as they are here at Juniata. Instead, they are the latest foot soldiers in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Colleges and universities across the country could learn a lot from Juniata’s decades-long tenting tradition.
For starters, instead of fighting the tents, colleges should embrace them. And there is certainly no need for campus police to respond with pepper spray to disperse peaceful student protesters.
Professor Plane, in now customary self-reflective scholarly analysis, goes back to his own youth:
As an undergraduate in the early 1990s, I spent a night on the campus quad in a makeshift shanty as part of an effort to get the board of trustees to divest from investments in companies doing business in South Africa. These sorts of protests help students hone their social consciousness — an essential ingredient of good citizenship.
UC-Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland, in a similar vein, issued a statement, congratulating her protestors for following "Principles of Community," which begins, "The University of California, Merced is committed to learning, teaching and serving the people of the San Joaquin Valley, California, the nation, and the world, through excellence in education, research and public service." Among the lessons to the world are a celebration of diversity, respect for creativity, tolerance, and "a sense of environmental responsibility." And, oh yeah, a celebration of "the spirit of academic excellence."
But not all is sweetness and light, and "harmless tomfoolery." Trevor Loudon links to a statement by Professor Cornel West on MSNBC regarding the street activity by the OWS movement to fight (of course) for "poor children." Professor West demanded "a war against poverty." We know that Professor West's academic specialty is Race and Rap, but shouldn't he know that we have already been there and done that?
Bill Keller, whose ponderous New York Times columns are sometimes inflicted on children through the newspaper's educational program, begins his column, "The Politics of Economics in the Age of Shouting," by noting the esteemed company he is in at the New York Times, namely a "Nobel-prize-winning economist." Taking the high road, he condemns all the shouting that has arisen since there has been competition with newspapers, like the New York Times:
The easiest way to stand out in such a vast crowd of microbroadcasters is to be the loudest, the angriest, the most outrageous. If you want that precious traffic, you stake out a position somewhere in oh-my-God territory and proclaim it with a vengeance. Global warming is a hoax! Vaccines make you sick! Obama is a Muslim! In vanquishing the conventional wisdom, sometimes it seems we have vanquished wisdom itself.
Dissident Prof is surprised that Kent State professor Julio Pino's shout-out, "Death to Israel," during a school assembly did not make this list.
Nor do such reflective columnists ponder the "shouting" on our college campuses that includes provocation and intimidation of police. Thanks to College Republicans and the reporting of Cliff Kincaid, we have access to news about a real breakdown of civil discourse in our public institutions of "higher learning," most notably UC-Davis, the target of media attention regarding police brutality against "kids."
Yet, there will be faculty resolutions galore condemning "police violence" on campus. These academics, like Judith Butler, professor of rhetoric and comparative literature, who co-authored the Berkeley statement, misuse their positions to advance not only notions like hers that there are more than two genders (nine as a figure I heard at my last academic conference) now have the perfect opportunity to fulfill the objectives begun in the 1960s. The Comintern may be gone but these people are essentially Marxists, advocating for the bankruptcy of the country in part through massive governent spending on "education" that is often nothing more than indoctrination.
While some may be like Nathan Brown, reveling in the limelight of thousands of students, others more passively work to destroy our civilization and economic system through a thousand cuts.
To wit:
"Photos with Charge": An associate professor of art at Michigan State University poses with colleagues and former students in various modes of undress in photos. It's called "Art."
The American Historical Association demands a WPA Federal Writers Project.
Archeology Professor John Schofield studies doodling by the Sex Pistols on the walls of their London flat in the 1970s. Such scholarship is presented as being on the same level of importance as the study of drawings by early humans in the caves of Lascaux in Southern France. Dissident Prof does note an evolutionary likeness.
In spite of all these fun topics, colleges just can't seem to retain students or to graduate on time those who do stay after receiving their financial aid checks, as Inside Higher Ed reports. I've heard the spiel countless times in various public institutions here in Georgia. We've got to retain students! The last workshop on "teaching skills" promoted using text-messages and Twitter in the classroom. Keep the students engaged! we were told. Keep them moving. One biology teacher demonstrated how she incorporated some hip-hop shoulder rolls into her lessons. In spite of their sensitivity to "cultural differences," the workshop leaders did not notice that such rhythms would not likely have been part of Dissident Prof's cultural heritage. (It's not that she didn't try. Having been denied tap and ballet lessons at a young age, the teen Dissident Prof took the city-sponsored African dance lessons, hopping on the bus from Benjamin Franklin High School to East High School in Rochester, New York. Had the biology workshop leader observed Dissident Prof's noticeably pale teenage body encased in a leotard attempting the gyrations they would have been a little more sensitive.)
Alas, as my collegue Malcolm notes in his witty post, there is no "safe space" for conservatives on our college campuses.
We will try to provide it here. Thanks to George Leef for posting about the Resistance on National Review's Phi Beta Cons blog. Thank you, fellow dissidents for your emails. We will respond. Thank you for your interest and willingness to fight. Remember, it's for the children.
