Dissident Prof has incorporated! Dissident Prof is now registered as a non-profit corporation in the state of Georgia as Dissident Prof Education Project, Inc. Just got the checking account and EIN number. Now for the IRS paperwork. Dissident Prof believes she has 27 months to file the paperwork, so contributions might be tax-deductible now. She is a bit behind in dispatches because of all the paperwork, but promises not to take 27 months!
Speaking of contributions, she is extremely grateful for a start-up grant, and contributions from dissident supporter-citizens. Most recent ones include
Don Vodopich
Eric Ribitsch
Ernie Gaida
Anonymous (but he's a great dancer!)
It's been an exciting month with Dissident Prof testifying before the Georgia Non-Civil House Judiciary Committee on a bill that would deny illegal aliens the right to attend public colleges. Why did she feel like Whittaker Chambers? Maybe it was because an advocate of illegal behavior, one of the attendees of the Teach-In, accused HER of lying by shouting it out in the committee room.
An appearance on the Rob & Dave show on WGST on Wednesday, March 21st, was so much fun. Thanks, Rob and Dave, for letting me and our Georgia NAS speaker, Professor Robert Paquette, tell Atlantans about the subversive activities on our campuses.
Her article on biased freshman composition textbooks was discussed in World Magazine. She made a repeat appearance in Phyllis Schlafly's Education Reporter, with two of her articles reprinted there (on SAT Wars and empathy education). One of her Townhall columns pointed out how newspaper editors privilege "Distinguished Professors" who support their liberal agenda.
Academia seems to be the incubator for much of the craziness and criminality we see in our society. A couple weeks after professors debated the merits of "post-abortion infanticide" in the Chronicle of Higher Education and other places, some of the conservative general interest magazines published articles about the travesty. Dissident Prof has not seen much in the left-wing press. Maybe it's because this is an issue that cannot be written off to "reactionary paranoia" about the slippery slope of abortion. The two "bioethicists" of the orignal academic paper argued for the right of parents to kill even healthy babies if they become "unbearable burdens." This goes even beyond the arguments of Princeton "bioethicist" Peter Singer. We have many, many professors who by the same logic are "unbearable burdens" sucking up tax dollars as they use their positions as launch pads for self-indulgent propagandizing.
Criminologists and law professors, as Tina Trent, in her blog, Crime Victims Media Report, points out, all too often apologize for and defend murderers and rapists. It's in her post on the case of Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi, who has been charged with hate crimes in the suicide of his former roommate Tyler Clementi. This case was brought up in the Prof's class as we discussed Richard Wright's essay in The God That Failed about leaving communism. Dissident Prof tried to point out the monumental shift that has taken place under our legal system with the classification of crimes by the perpetrator's feelings and thoughts (and directed at certain privileged groups, as Trent points out). Dissident Prof tried to explain how this approached the show trial of Wright's comrade Ross, who was charged with basically thought crimes. Students generally seem to be sympathetic to Clementi and feel that Ravi should be punished. But really? Holding a person responsible for another's action in killing himelf? This is crossing a line of no return. Dissident Prof will keep trying to turn the conversation back to principles.
During this election season, presidential candidate Rick Santorum has become the target of attack for doing what is usually unthinkable for politicians who are usually obeisant to the Professoriate. Santorum's condemnation of the indoctrination that takes place on our campuses invited this pseudo-learned response from Inside Higher Ed. Santorum's views--from his college days--were analyzed in a New Republic article. Dissident Prof is amazed that the reporter could find a professor who still had one of Santorum's papers from 1980. She herself has difficulty keeping track of her students' paperwork even for the required three years. And from the comments she's heard from conservative students, many professors have difficulty locating papers and exams during the same semester when a grade is questioned. Funny how that is.
President Obama responded to Santorum's charges of snobbery, and, characteristically, promised more financial aid for people who increasingly believe a college degree is a right. The White House is also encouraging students to be "Changemakers." (Interesting term.) Peter Wood nicely breaks down such efforts to promote "citizenship." You can see what they mean by looking at the speakers at the Clayton State University conference on "Civic Engagement" here last week. Two are from Occupy Atlanta, Tim Franzen and Shab Bashiri; the other is Ben Speight of Teamster's local 728.
Certainly the student who recently told my colleague in Missouri that he could not be in class to take an exam because he had scheduled a menage a trois for that particular afternoon did not display any scholarly aptitude. But maybe it was because the event was scheduled soon after the nationwide celebration on campuses of women's vaginas, with the now traditional performance of the play the Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. A colleague on my campus urged others to encourage their students to attend this "harrowing" event. Indeed.
When students are not thinking about sex organs, they are thinking about protesting the increasingly high cost of earning degrees in sexuality studies, oppression studies, and in the deconstruction of the ephemera and the detritutus of hip-hop.
Soon after Vagina Monologues Days of Celebration we have spring. All professors know that students like to go outside and ask to hold classes outside when the weather gets warm. Indeed it is warm enough to begin ramping up the Occupy events as this Occupy Colleges site demonstrates. Dissident Prof is not saying this but the linked article from the Nation magazine is saying that President Obama is "echoing" the Occupy movement. A conference called the Left Forum took up the topic of the Occupy movement as its subject of scholarly investigation this month. The 5,000 attendees at Pace University included professors and activists, categories which are rapidly losing their distinction. (City College professor and activist Angus Johnston demonstrates one example.)
Yet, let one law professor treat those activists of the Tea Party respectfully and the reviewer of her book, The Tea Party: Three Principles, for Inside Higher Ed suddenly becomes skeptical. Before he even begins the interview with author Elizabeth Price Foley, the interviewer preempts any serious consideration of her points by citing hostile (and dubious) studies of the Tea Party.
Dennis Prager sums up pretty well the dominant ethos of today's campus. The decline in intellectual standards resulting from the insistence that everyone should get a college degree is evident every where, from young men having to be told to pull up their pants as they ask professors to reschedule exams for sexual escapades, to the changes in even the most basic of writing courses, freshman composition, as this call for papers (hat tip Will Fitzhugh) for a panel called "Beyond the Essay" illustrates. Multi-media projects, "collaborative composition," and "civic engagement" are some of the alteratives to the old-fashioned essay that are to be discussed. Does anybody remember when we complained about the need to teach even basic writing skills in college? Now students are taught the rhetoric of the protest slogan and how to cobble together a multi-media presentation. Dissident Prof believes that students not capable of passing standard freshman composition would be better off learning welding. (Can't be distracted by falling drawers with a blow torch in your hands!) Come to think of it, so would many of the professors. Or maybe all those professors at the Teach-In on behalf of illegal aliens should take up their work in the Georgia fields once the illegals head back to the Latin American lands they praise so much.
Once again, thank you, everyone, for your support. With this grant and individual contributions, Dissident Prof will be able to keep developing the website, and get a few hours of help with bookkeeping and administration. She has already contracted another dissident professor to write a guide for dissident students that will help them resist the re-educators. More to come soon!
P.S. The photo at the top is not really The Dissident Cat. However, the pose fits as does the coloring. Dissident Cat is feeling much better, as evidenced by all the stuff that has been knocked off of Dissident Prof's desk and the magazines spread across the floor. Sparky thinks the National Review makes a particularly good sled.
