Saramago... muerte

Nosotros estamos asistiendo a lo que llamaría la muerte del ciudadano y, en su lugar, lo que tenemos y, cada vez más, es el cliente. Ahora ya nadie te pregunta qué es lo que piensas, ahora te preguntan qué marca de coche, de traje, de corbata tienes, cuánto ganas…
—José Saramago, El Mundo, Madrid, 6 de diciembre de 1998

Saramago died yesterday at 86. I liked some of his writing and posted an essay of his a decade ago on The AD web page en espanol (see http://www.theamericandissident.org/CriticalEssays/Saramago.htm).

The cartoon above was sketched about a decade ago also. As with all rich and famous writers and poets, things are not always as ideal as depicted. They are flying Saramago's arse all the way to Lisboa from Lanzarote in the Canarias in a very expensive looking coffin where they will incinerate him, then throw his ashes to the wind. What a waste of money, especially for a devout atheist like Saramago! The communist Saramago doesn’t make much sense here, unless of course one can and does divide communists into the wealthy and the not-so wealthy. By the way, I've been to Lanzarote, an amazing island of volcanic beauty... other worldly. In fact, it was where Planet of the Apes was filmed. Get there, if ever you can!

Chloe Garcia-Roberts

Why Poetry Doesn't Matter
Dear Chloe Garcia-Roberts,
Since you have refused to respond to my correspondence (three emails since last November!) and my request that The American Dissident be listed on the publicly-funded Mass Poetry Festival website as a "partner" next to other such Massachusetts literary journals, I have satirized you in a P. Maudit cartoon. The little fellow on the stick with court jester hat is, of course, Charles Coe. What else is a common, unconnected citizen to do in the state of Cronychusetts? It is absolutely shameful that you head a publicly-funded organization as a director and call yourself a poet. Clearly, you don't give a goddamn about free speech, vigorous debate and democracy! The cartoon is attached and also constitutes this week's American Dissident blog entry together with this email. See http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-poetry-doesnt-matter.html. You are, of course, encouraged to engage in vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, on my blog site. Unlike you, I would never CENSOR comments, no matter how unusually TRUTHFUL.
Sincerely,
G. Tod Slone

Robert Pinsky

For Justice, Equity, and Freedom of Expression in Massachusetts


[Essay sent to Massachusetts Cultural Council, Concord Cultural Council, Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Massachusetts Attorney General, Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Concord Poetry Center, University of Massachusetts, Lesley University, Salem State College, and Others (see below for email addresses)]

As a citizen of our purported “democracy,” I write to inform of various grievances, mostly occurring in the State of Massachusetts over the past 15 years. This initiative was sparked by one of those grievances with regards the taxpayer-funded Massachusetts Poetry Festival, sponsored by the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, which simply refuses to respond to my queries sent last November, this May, and again on the first of June as to how The American Dissident, a 501 c3 nonprofit journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence, might become a “Poetry Partner” and be listed on its webpage next to, amongst others, Cave Canem, Bagel Bards, Wild Apples, Concord Poetry Center, and Citizen’s Bank, which by the way is my bank. Its Director of the Massachusetts Poetry Outreach Project, Chloe Garcia-Roberts, will not respond. My list of grievances include the following and mostly pertain to the State of Massachusetts:

1. The ACLU of Massachusetts refused to help me and the state press refused to report on my tenure battle at Fitchburg State College in 1996, where corruption included highly whimsical faculty evaluations, nepotism, and my eviction mid-semester from my office w/o due process. Unlike Florida and other states, no Freedom of Information legislation exists in Massachusetts. The transcripts of my arbitration hearing are thus kept secret. Why do journalists and others accept this sad status quo of lack of transparency? For actual documents, including a rather humorous page I managed to grab from the arbitration transcript, consult www.theamericandissident.org/FitchburgStateCollege.htm.

2. The state police arrested and incarcerated me in a Concord jail cell in 1999 for protesting the absence of free speech at Walden Pond State Reservation. The refusal of the local and state media to report on the incident was deplorable. Moreover, the state park continues to refuse to permit me to stock flyers critical of it and other state matters at its kiosks, despite the following:

“Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939), it has been settled in the law that public parks—since they are held in trust for the public and have traditionally been used for assembly, communication, and public discussion—are ‘traditional’ public forums. […] Once a place has been designated a public forum, the government’s power to limit speech there is extremely narrow. Viewpoint discrimination is never permissible. Content discrimination (discrimination based on the subject matter of the speech, whatever the point of view taken on it) is acceptable only if the government can show the following:

1) There is a compelling state interest for the exclusion.
2) The regulation making the exclusion is narrowly drawn to achieve that state interest
3) The regulation leaves open ample alternative channels for the communication.
Speech has been broadly defined as an expression that includes, but is not limited to, what you wear, read, say, paint, perform, believe, protest, or even silently resist. ‘Speech activities’ include leafleting, picketing, symbolic acts, wearing armbands, demonstrations, speeches, forums, concerts, motion pictures, stage performances, remaining silent, and so on." (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)

For details and documents regarding my arrest and incarceration, consult http://www.theamericandissident.org/WaldenPondStateReservation.htm.

3. The publicly-funded Concord Poetry Center ostracized me as a local dissident poet. Director Joan Houlihan sums up its twisted mentality: “The idea of your teaching a workshop or delivering a lecture on the art of literary protest or poetry protest, or simply protest (Concord is where it all started!) occurred to me even before you mentioned it, so, yes, it’s something I will consider as we progress (this is only our first event). However, I must say I don’t favor having you teach at the center if you protest the reading.” Evidently, I chose to protest and was thus never offered a workshop to teach. For details on my protests at the CPC, consult http://www.theamericandissident.org/ConcordPoetryCenter.htm.

4. The publicly-funded Academy of American Poets censored (i.e., removed) my comments and banned me from participating in its online forums in 2006. The AAP is connected with the publicly-funded Massachusetts Poetry Festival and sponsors National Poetry Month, which is propagated in the nation’s public schools and colleges. For details, censored comments, and AAP chancellor remarks, see http://www.theamericandissident.org/AcademyAmericanPoets.htm.

5. The Massachusetts Cultural Council refuses to accord public-grant monies to The American Dissident because the journal has an annual budget inferior to the Council’s arbitrarily imposed $10,000 annual budget minimum for grant applicants. It thus funds journals like Agni, which is connected to Boston University, which has an endowment of over one-billion dollars. For my attempts to breach the proverbial brick wall, consult my correspondence with Council apparatchiks, including Council coordinator Charles Coe, who is also a founding director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, at http://www.theamericandissident.org/CharlesCoe.htm.

6. The Concord Cultural Council adopted a regulation in 2009 prohibiting funding to any project it arbitrarily deemed to be of a “political nature. This regulation was clearly adopted to prevent The American Dissident from receiving public funding. Indeed and in futility, I’ve been applying as a publisher and poet in Concord for such funding over the past decade. The Concord Cultural Council, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and state Attorney General Martha Coakley refused to address my grievance with this regard. For details, see http://www.theamericandissident.org/CCC.htm.

7. Director Karen Wulf of PEN New England (“defending freedom of expression”) refuses to respond to any of my grievances regarding impediments to my freedom of expression in New England. It is likely that Joan Houlihan (see above) and PEN director Karen Wulf, both comfortably installed at Lesley University, are friends. It is likely that Charles Coe is also a friend.

8. Professor Fred Marchant, director of Suffolk University’s Poetry Center, refuses to respond to my requests that it consider, for the sake of students, including The American Dissident. Marchant is a friend of Houlihan. For a cartoon depicting the rampant cliquishness of the poetry milieu in Massachusetts, see http://www.theamericandissident.org/SuffolkUniversityPoetryCenter.html.

9. The Watertown Free Public Library issued me a no-trespass order without due process for my attempting to interest its reference librarian, Ardis Francoeur, in subscribing to The American Dissident. Again, State Attorney General Coakley and the press refused to respond regarding my grievance.

10. Word censorship is now automatically effected by The Boston Globe on its website. Globe journalists favor that censorship. I was censored by them. For a cartoon I drew regarding that indifference, featuring Jeff Jacoby and Editor David Beard, see http://www.nationalfreepress.org/cartoonists-mainmenu-250/g-tod-slone-mainmenu-406.

11. Some 200 Massachusetts college English professors were contacted regarding my attempts to interest them in radically altering the academic culture of sycophancy, turning a blind eye, careerism, PC, prevarication, and apathy to censorship. Only four responded. Professor Ruth Jennison wrote: "Please remove me from your list." Professor William Nelles briefly argued: “you loser.” Professor J T Skerrett, Jr. was a little more voluble: “Do you really think that insulting and reviling the faculty is the way to persuade us to read your publication?” As for Professor Jack Conway, read his lengthy diatribe (with student support) here: http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2008/11/unspoken-mantra-of-u-mass-english.html. Yes, how dare anyone think, let alone state, that all is not rosy in academe in Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts poet-professor, leftist luminary Martin Espada refuses to respond to any of the criticism I’ve sent his way. After all, silence, not democracy’s cornerstone, vigorous debate, is always the most effective response for those in power positions, no matter how little.

12. As testimony to the ambient ideological requisites for teaching in Massachusetts, cite North Shore Community College, to which I’d applied unsuccessfully for a job as an English instructor: “Appreciation of multiculturalism required.” Well, I brought that to the attention of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which then wrote the college, resulting in the college’s removal of that unconstitutional requisite. Sadly, however, the concept still remains firmly implanted in the brains of the administrators and faculty who enacted it.

As a footnote, the response of Paul Lappin, director of the Parker Lecture Series (University of Massachusetts at Lowell), to my query is quite interesting and revealing in its refreshing honesty. I’d asked whether or not the PLS was closed to dissident voices as lecturers and only open to those who would please the comfy bourgeois mindset. Lappin responded: “comfy bourgeois” [only].

Finally, my staging of various solo protests critical of state-sponsored poets and poetry events at the Concord Poetry Center, Concord Free Public Library, Robert Creeley Prize in Acton, and elsewhere confirm the indifference of poets, teachers and professors to questions of free speech and vigorous debate. My numerous critical letters to the editor of student newspapers at colleges employing me over the years confirm professorial indifference to matters of corruption, free speech, and vigorous debate For examples of these letters, consult http://www.theamericandissident.org/ElmiraCollege.htm and http://www.theamericandissident.org/GramblingStateUniversity.htm. Unfortunately, during my five years at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts, the student newspaper refused to publish anything I submitted of a critical nature. It is truly appalling to observe how little so many well-educated persons really care about censorship and democracy.

Will any of the individuals and organizations contacted stand up to help me open Massachusetts to equality of opportunity and freedom of expression, including and especially regarding dissident points of view? How did it ever get so bad, where literature operates like politics and anything but truth and courage becomes manifest? Money? Is that how? Democracy is in peril in Massachusetts. It is in peril when persons in publicly-funded positions remain unresponsive to citizen grievances, preferring instead to ostracize such citizens.

It is my experience that NONE of the individuals and organizations contacted will respond and stand up apart from the literary herd where the feed is quite plentiful. We’re talking here not about the myth of the proverbial starving poet, but rather about the fattened academic poet. It is astonishing how very bourgeois literature has become today. Take a look at the Lesley University Creative Writing faculty page, where most of the instructors simply link to their publishers. You’d be hard-pressed to find personal email addresses for the instructors, who proudly equate themselves with their published books… and sadly not much else. In America, it’s all about gaining a recognizable name a la Simic, Pinsky, Gluck, or whomever. And once you’ve reached that stage of intellectual sellout, then you’re all set monetarily and with invitations and prizes galore. It is sickening that our students are not being taught to question and challenge that troubling status quo. Can this sad sell, sell, sell of names be stopped? Probably not. It’s become an integral part of America. Our students are being taught to blindly admire the famous and strive to become one of them. Buck that trend and expect severe ostracizing.

What can you, the individuals and organizations contacted, do as citizens? Well, for starters, you could write the freedom-disdaining organizations mentioned in this missive and tell them that you’ve been made aware that some of they censor, treat with inequity, break the law, scorn vigorous debate, do not tolerate criticism, demand ideological adherence, etc., and that you do not favor those things. In fact, you could also request to have your organization removed from the Massachusetts Poetry Festival “Poetry Partner” list. Pipedream? But of course!
..................................

letterstoeditor@bostonherald.com, mfreidson@metro-boston.com, jacoby@globe.com, beard@globe.com, mfeeney@globe.com, jackson@globe.com, ago@state.ma.us, fjmarchant@aol.com, mina.wright@art.state.ma.us, dan.blask@art.state.ma.us, voltairepress@live.com, paullappin@hotmail.com, chloe@masspoetry.org, Paul_Marion@uml.edu, bootstrapproductions@gmail.com, info@bostonbookfest.org, writers@capecodwriterscenter.org, wendycobb@ccpoets.org, alisonmeyers@ccpoets.org, camillerankine@ccpoets.org, editors@wildapples.org, joan@concordpoetry.org, connect@echoditto.com, favpoem@bu.edu, mollywatt@comcast.net, jenise@alum.mit.edu, info@fordhallforum.org, info@frostfound.org, sonya@grubstreet.org, whitney@grubstreet.org, chris@grubstreet.org, doug_holder@post.harvard.edu, m@mwest.com, Admin@PoetryJam.org, Charles.coe@art.state.ma.us, ibbetsonpress@msn.com, pen-ne@lesley.edu, Bertin@ncac.org, mespada@english.umass.edu, rpinsky@bu.edu, joan@concordpoetry.org, cpc@concordpoetry.org, fwright@brandeis.edu, jvanderv@lesley.edu, scramer@lesley.edu, alison@blueflowerarts.com, info@tsellis.com, delliott@conknet.com, sugoodman@aol.com, Michael.lowenthal.90@alum.dartmouth.org, lychack@gmail.com, lorraine.allison@salemstate.edu, dorothy.anderson@salemstate.edu, mary.balestraci@salemstate.edu, Elizabeth.bates@salemstate.edu,
Paul.beauvais@salemstate.edu, marc.bootsebenfield@salemstate.edu, h.branscomb@salemstate.edu, susanna.brougham@salemstate.edu, patricia.buchanan@salemstate.edu, maura.bullock@salemstate.edu, nicole.buscemi@salemstate.edu, susan.butterworth@salemstate.edu,

The Ivory Tower

Sam Hamill

From Fierce Contention: Conversations with the Established Order and Other Parodias de Discursos y Diálogos con Sordos

While hunting for a photo of Ron Camel, co-founder of Nickel Chasm Press, I came across an interview. Camel was a fattish gray-haired character, a little older than me, and with heart problems. I’d been fishing around his Poets against Conflict website and didn’t like some of the things on it at all, including its highlighting of established-order poet Martin Blada. So, I wanted to cartoonify the fellow. That’s what I did, I cartoonified established-order fellows, mostly literary and academic, sometimes big, often little. I read through the interview, which resulted from Camel’s appearance at a university in the mid-west. So, I contacted the Chairperson of the Poetry & Writing Department of that institution, Barbara B. Bright Meth, and threw out the ole gauntlet:

As a dissident poet and editor, perhaps I would make an unusual speaker at your university. As a Poet against Prominent Poets, I would stand in direct antipodes to Ron Camel and his Poets against Conflict. If there is no chance, as I highly suspect, might there be a chance that your university library would subscribe to the nonprofit journal I’ve been editing since 1998 (only $20/year)? It might be of interest to your students to be exposed to the alternative viewpoints expressed in the journal.

It was tough as nails getting universities to subscribe… for evident reasons. But I persisted and persisted and persisted over the years. To my surprise, Meth actually responded. Normally, challenged professors did not respond. Her response was a good one in its revealing brevity: “How could you possibly be against Ron Camel? Ron is a dear friend of mine. What did he possibly do to you?”
So, Camel was a friend. The poetry networks fostered backslapping, eulogy ad nausea, and general incest. Throw in a sudden jolt of fiery critique and it would shock the system like a stick in the spokes of business as usual, though only for a moment. The American Academy of Arts and Letters didn’t even try to hide the incestuous nature of its system. To become a member, one had to be selected by a member. Thus, Ginsberg chose Burrows who chose Ferlinghetti who chose Creeley who chose Snyder who chose Baraka. In any case, Meth’s was the old don't criticize my good friend because if you do, I'll shut the door on you. But since she asked, I responded:

It is really amazing to me just how closed so many academics can be to criticism. Yes, Camel is your friend, so anyone daring to criticize him must be ostracized and excluded! How sad. It is as if your poet friends are somehow above reproach. But poets are not gods. They are mere mortals. Yet you and so many like you seek to deify them, always pushing the fame of their names. Camel parades around as a dissident, but was pumped up by established-order monies. How to explain that? He drools obsequious thank-yous to the NEA on his website, yet the NEA is a corrupt public organization if ever there was one. Moreover, it is an easy thing to criticize war afar, but a difficult one to criticize the very close-to-home academic hand that feeds a lot of the Poets against Conflict, especially the “prominent” ones (did you hear that?).
Camel doesn’t want to heed that criticism. I suppose academe has been feeding him well too, directly or indirectly via invitations like yours, etc. He will not put my anti-war poem on his website… probably because it is critical of leftists Hillary and Obama. He will not include my essay on socially-engaged poetry with other essays he’s included… on socially-engaged poetry. He probably won’t do that because the essay is very critical of academic poets, including the ones he’s published.
Camel admits he made an error by voting for Obama, the anti-war candidate war president. But I ask how someone his age could have been so easily duped, unless of course he buys into PC, heart and soul. In fact, one must ask how someone like him was invited to the White House in the first place. Evidently, he and the other “prominent” invited poets were perceived to be docile… and for good reason.
Camel provides a separate page on his website: “Poems by Prominent Poets.” But what constitutes a “prominent poet” and why should a “prominent poet” write better poems about war than poets, who, for example, actually spent time fighting in war? Evidently, “prominent poets” are poets who, for the most part, acquired a certain expertise at playing the game of climbing up the ladder of “success”, turning a blind eye, right and left, making sure not to criticize, making sure to kiss ass wherever ass should be kissed. They are poets of the system—the established order. Finally, it seems that the creation of Poets against Conflict was a nice ploy for Camel to further his name and give himself a title, Director of Poets against Conflict. Christ, do we really need a director of that? SILENCE (is always golden in academe).
BTW, I just noticed Branchlet Benson, CEO of the Academy of American Scribes was CEO of Camel’s Nickel Chasm Press. The Academy censored and banned me. So, let’s add that to the list of why I think Camel ought to be criticized. Would you protest the censorship incident? SILENCE.

No response. I waited two days, then shot out a brief email: “Nothing like VIGOROUS DEBATE, CORNERSTONE OF DEMOCRACY, eh?! What about my comments on your friend Camel?” The democracy-catch was my customary bait. Sometimes it worked, most times it didn’t. But Meth responded, this time even a tad more vigorously.

Maybe white/Western democracy, but not Native-American democracy, where true democracy was stolen. I am an Iroquois woman! I don't have time to argue with someone who simply wishes to argue. Good bye.

Again, I responded:

So, I take it your answer is NO regarding a possible invitation and subscription? Too bad for your students who would likely benefit from an alternative viewpoint, one critical of academics and academe. It would likely open their eyes a tad. But apparently you want to keep their eyes closed and focused on literary icons and the positivist literary established order.

And again, she responded, this time longer and even more revealing.

Some of us have to work to feed our families, versus attacking people who are working, or other poets who we do not know. The academic field differs little from the tobacco field, or cracker factory. My dissent, for the moment, is taking issue with some white male who lurks on the internet attacking poets for pleasure.

The cracker factory! Now how could you beat that one? Yes, teaching 2-3 hours per day differed little from the 60-hour work week of a cracker-factory worker. That one reminded me of Frank’s comment that his teaching college courses was akin to sharecropping. Christ, they couldn’t even recognize how relatively easy their jobs were! I worked at a factory, I welded at a shipyard, and I taught college courses. But I know damn well what was tough and what was not. College was not. Hmm. I wonder if Meth were trying to insult me with the C-word, “cracker.” And how they hated the white male! He was the cause of all their problems, including their salary raises, paid-vacation sabbaticals, three-hour workdays, and even their new president Obama, not to mention their life-time guaranteed job positions. I wrote back.

“Some of us have to work to feed our families,” you state, echoing the excuse of so many professors who would dismiss anyone critical of them for not manifesting the courage to speak rude truth. And yet the tenured professor, unlike other professionals with the exception of the supreme-court justice, enjoys life-time job security that can only be revoked if laws are broken. So, how can one possibly explain the amazing silence of 99.9% of the country’s tenured professors regarding the corrupt institutions and administrators that feed them? In other words, your “some of us have to work to feed our families” excuse is nonsense. SILENCE!
You even use that excuse to dismiss the rude truth. After all, that rude truth inevitably makes those who have to turn a blind eye so they can feed their families, though they don’t really have to, look bad. No matter. The criticism remains valid. And there will always be excuses for keeping ones mouth shut in the face of corruption, which is why whistleblowers should be commended. In fact, rare academic whistleblowers should be honored with statues on their respective campuses. Because you have to work to feed your family and thus must not criticize the academic hand that stuffs your face does not mean that I cannot criticize it and that my criticism is not valid. At least have the intellectual integrity to recognize that fact. SILENCE!
Criticism ought to be examined and point-by-point refuted if you, for example, believe it not to be valid. Dismissing it as “ATTACK” has become a truly sad modus operandi of academic established-order literati. And I can back that assertion with scores of actual examples and statements, adding your correspondence to the sad, sad pile! Christ, what do you teach your students: the art of literary icon worship and groveling for three letters of recommendation?
Evidently, you've become yet another closed-minded academic of the literary established order—Iroquois female or white male, what difference? None at all! Sadly, you can't admit that even to yourself. You cannot even admit to having writer’s taboos, as in do not criticize the corrupt academic hand that feeds and do not criticize established-order icons. You cannot even admit that there is an academic/literary established order and that those like me who dare stand up on their hind legs apart from that herd to criticize it must be dismissed as angry or whatever and banned, censored, and ostracized. How sad… for literature AND democracy.

Meth responded: “I am not tenured, nor tenure track. You are wrong.”
Well, the response was laughable. Okay, I was wrong. She’s not tenured. And so what? I wrote again, but this time attaching a cartoon I sketched featuring Meth, Camel, and Branchlet.

I repeat: Will you consider inviting me as a rare dissident poet? Will you ask your university library to consider subscribing to The American Dissident so that it might abide by the ALA Library Bill of Rights, as in "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view..." not for the sake of faculty, but rather for that of students. Attached is a satirical cartoon I just drew on you and Ron. Enjoy.

No further response would ever come from her Barbara B. Bright Meth. DOA.

Penelope Creeley

A previous blog entry described my protest against the anointing of Gary Snyder with the Robert Creeley Award in Acton (see http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2010/03/fierce.html). The protest was staged because Snyder was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, which had censored and banned me. Snyder was indifferent to that censorship incident and banning. The directors of the Robert Creeley Award, including Bob Clawson and Penelope Creeley, were also indifferent to that censorship incident and banning. Clawson would later inform me that Penelope had mentioned during the ceremony that she respected my right to free speech, that is, to protest... as if I'd needed her "respect" with that regard. The cartoon explains why that "respect" was as vacuous as vacuous gets.

Experiment in Democracy: Goucher College

Notice of this blog was sent to the president, provost, members of the English and Cultural Sustainability faculty, and to student newspaper staff of Goucher College in the hope of inciting vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. One student eventually responded... anonymously. She (?) did not however respond to my critique of her response.

Why criticize Goucher College in Maryland? I don’t know anyone there or who even went there. Nevertheless, while hunting through the job lists I came across a want-ad for an English professor with the following stipulation, as accurately noted in the cartoon above: “Goucher College is committed to increasing the diversity of the campus community and seeks applications from those who will contribute to this effort.”

What that statement clearly implies is that job candidates are expected to espouse and foster and even somehow prove their adherence to a particular politically-correct viewpoint, one that evidently does not favor a diversity of opinions at all. Although Goucher is a private institution, its policy is still a slap in the face of democracy. Likely, the policy is legal. However, if the college states that it adheres to the principle of freedom of expression, it might not be legal. The cartoon, of course, is meant to satirize yet another instance of the PC-plague wreaking havoc in academe and stir up debate, though likely that won’t happen at all… unless of course Goucher’s faculty and student body are somewhat unique.

Diversity and multiculturalism have proven to be wonderful diversions away from truth and the courage to speak truth. Often, they serve as last refuge for sellout Sixties scoundrels. Today, universities in America are shamefully more likely to affix “diversity” in their academic mottos, web pages, and job ads, than “truth” and the “courage to speak unadulterated truth even and especially if doing so might prove offensive and otherwise harmful to ones career.” Sadly, academe seems to have become a refuge for careerists, not for truth tellers.

The problem with the multicultural ideology pushed in academe is, of course, the faulty reasoning (all ideologies tend to contain faulty reasoning) that, for example, would argue that I as a white man would bring, more than anything else, the perspective of a privileged European American, member of the ruling class, to the arena of ideas. Nothing of course could be more stereotypically false! The faulty reasoning of multiculturalists would also have us believe that a black man or Latino, who has played the game and sucked up to the system all of his or her life, would bring the perspective of an oppressed Afro-American or Hispanic. Instead, what he or she would bring is the perspective of a faithful careerist bureaucrat, nothing more and nothing less. Instead, I as a dissident would bring the perspective of a man who has actively questioned and challenged academe, the ruling class, and its diverse established-order apparatchiks—black, white, and Latino. Sadly, that is precisely the perspective that academe will not tolerate, though from which it could evidently most benefit.

Administrators and faculty generally will not respond to criticism, unless forced. Vigorous debate is rarely if ever something they hold dear, which is why, in the context of these experiments in democracy, I also make it a point to contact the students at the helm of the college newspaper, in this case, The Q, whose motto is “Reliable, Trustworthy, Comprehensive.” Nevertheless, chances are slim that even one student contacted will prove sufficiently curious, courageous, and un-indoctrinated to actually respond. Comprehensive? We’ll see about that!

By the way, Goucher’s MA Program in Cultural Sustainability really exists (see http://www.goucher.edu/x33261.xml). Personally, I thought it odd, if not absurd, to devote an entire Master’s degree program to the topic, an evident specialty in the area of sociology. But such programs tend to proliferate in academe today because they reflect PC ideology and more importantly attract money for the professors and respective institutions. Will we ever see an MA Program in TRUTH and the COURAGE TO SPEAK TRUTH? Likely not! Would Goucher College ever hire a professor like me? Certainly not! Welcome to the brave new world of America.