Claudia Emerson

Open Letter to the English Professors 
Of the University of Mary Washington

A satirical cartoon of one of your colleagues, Claudia Emerson, is up on The American Dissident blogsite:
http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/. Please inform Emerson, whose email address was not available to me. Experience tells me it is highly likely that you do not believe in vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, and do not give a damn about the value of criticism and free speech, preferring instead the establishment of speech restricting codes, zones, and policies. If, however, you prove to be quite extraordinary, consider subscribing to The American Dissident. Yale, Harvard, Buffalo, Wisconsin, Brown, Johns Hopkins, and other such universities are subscribers.

Your silence will simply imply that you, indeed, operate as yet another academic herd lead by business-minded (not democracy-minded) provosts, deans, and chairpersons. It will simply imply that you too fail to heed Thoreau and Emerson (“let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine,” “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways”).

America has truly taken the wrong pathway, educating so many, many of its citizens as unquestioning and unchallenging societal cogs driven not by principles, but instead by careerism. One day, perhaps in the near future, even our politicians will have a difficult time referring to the nation as a democracy, thanks in part to the nation's college and university professors.

See the blogsite for other experiments in free speech effected on faculty of other universities and colleges. Thank you for your attention.