Benjamin D. Carson, Department Chairperson

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The following constitutes my brief correspondence with Bridgewater State University's Benjamin Carson.

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“Applicants should be strongly committed to excellence in teaching and advising, and to working in a multicultural environment that fosters diversity. They should also have an ability to use technology effectively in teaching and learning, the ability to work collaboratively, evidence of scholarly activity, and a commitment to public higher education.”  

From: George Slone
To: "benjamin.carson@bridgew.edu"
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 1:28 PM
Subject: Adjunct English Courses

December 18, 2011

Dear Dr. Benjamin D. Carson, Dept. Chair, English Department, Bridgewater State University: 

Please consider me for adjunct English courses. Also, please consider my attached course proposal on “Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence.” I’ve got a doctorate in English Studies and extensive college teaching experience and numerous publications. Currently, I teach online courses for American Public University and have been invited to Dr. Dan Sklar’s English classes (Endicott College) each semester for the past several years to discuss “Literature, Democracy and Dissidence.” Thank you for your attention. 

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From: "Carson, Benjamin D."
To: George Slone
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 3:07 PM
Subject: RE: Adjunct English Courses

Dear George,

I appreciate your interest in teaching part-time at BSU.

We do not currently have openings for adjuncts in our department. The administration, against my wishes, keeps the advertisement for VLs listed on the HR website, even though no adjuncts are needed. So there is no search for adjuncts at this time. If you have uploaded your material to the HR website, it will be available to me if I do need to go into the adjunct pool.

Best,

Ben

Benjamin D. Carson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Chair

Department of English

Tillinghast 339

Bridgewater State University

508-531-1456

bcarson@bridgew.edu

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From: George Slone
To: "Carson, Benjamin D."
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 1:01 PM
Subject: Re: Adjunct English Courses

Letters to a Young Department Chairperson: 

I do appreciate your quick reply. Yet how is it possible that “one of the most vibrant departments” at a state university would not express an iota of interest in The American Dissident, a unique journal devoted to Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence? Well, it is true that“vibrant” means “pulsating with vigor and energy” (i.e., a lot of running around), and not necessarily with curiosity and courageousness. You note the “rich array of courses” at your institution, yet do not offer any courses even remotely similar to “Literature, Dissidence, and Democracy,” the one I created and in which you also failed to express an iota of interest. In fact, how does such lack of interest and curiosity reflect the statement preceding your job ad for English adjuncts: “Applicants should be strongly committed […] to working in a multicultural environment that fosters diversity”? Or am I quite wrong in thinking that by “diversity” you meant diversity of opinions, as opposed to superficial skin color, and diversity of guts, as opposed to mere ethnicity? 

Finally, why not mention in your “Chair’s Welcome” that you encourage student and faculty questioning and challenging of all things, including and especially multiculti ideology and the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex—its mass of institutions (e.g., NEA, Guggenheim, state cultural councils, and universities), prize-winning icons (Beatniks et al), award-winning journals (Agni, Poetry, the Bridge et al), grant-receiving professors, and of course Holy Canon. 

Remember: the noble title of "chairperson" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes conformity and safety rather than mere agreement. Yes, I did paraphrase that from Christopher Hitchens’ Letters to a Young Contrarian. 

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[Chair's Welcome

Thank you for visiting the English department website. English is one of the largest majors at Bridgewater and one of the most vibrant departments. With twenty-five full-time and many more part-time faculty, we offer a rich array of courses and programs designed to give our students broad introductions to the craft of writing and the study of literature, along with many opportunities for in-depth study. English is a diverse and dynamic field, and our faculty bring their expertise and enthusiasm to everything from Beowulf to the Beat poets; from creative non-fiction to the teaching of writing; and from contemporary film to literature from around the world. 

A major in English allows you a great deal of flexibility in designing a program of study that best meets your needs, whether your goal is a career in teaching, writing, or business, further graduate study, or a deeper appreciation for the texts that shape our culture. Majors can choose to concentrate in secondary education or writing, and are encouraged to take advantage of our internship program and opportunities for independent study. Creative writers are invited to participate in the award-winning journal theBridge; students of literature are encouraged to take part in a yearly symposium hosted with Stonehill College and a variety of other venues for undergraduate research. We have a chapter of the international English honor society, Sigma Tau Delta, along with a program for departmental honors. We award several scholarships each year. 

In addition to first-year composition, we offer non-majors many courses in literature and writing, most of which offer credit in the CORE. For graduate students, we offer an MA in literature and an MAT in conjunction with the School of Education. We also offer a program of post-baccalaureate study for students seeking their initial teaching license.

Thanks again for your interest - please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Benjamin D. Carson,  Bridgewater State University, English Department

He is currently at work on an article on anarchism and the 'politics of reading.' 

Benjamin Carson
Chairperson and Associate Professor of English]

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From: "Carson, Benjamin D."
To: George Slone
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 1:01 PM
Subject: RE: Adjunct English Courses

Dear George,

I find your response both amusing and embarrassing. My email was simply a statement of fact: we have no openings at this time for adjunct faculty. What courses you’ve taught, want to teach, or think we should want you to teach for us, is totally irrelevant. There are no openings in our department. Period. End of discussion. But if there were, based solely on this email I would be very reluctant to offer you a position. How could you teach issues of audience when you yourself have no sense of audience? Sending an email that is condescending and almost hysterical in tone suggests you lack the rhetorical savvy we value in our adjunct faculty. 

Christopher Hitchens was a great stylist; he was also a blustering blowhard. But something tells me that that is why you admire him.

Good luck with your job search. You’re going to need it.

Benjamin D. Carson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Chair

Department of English

Tillinghast 339

Bridgewater State University

508-531-1456

bcarson@bridgew.edu

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From: George Slone
To: "Carson, Benjamin D."
Sent: Sunday, December 25, 2011 10:42 AM
Subject: Re: Adjunct English Courses

True, your email was“simply a statement of fact.” True, by responding as I did and do, I knowingly reduce my chances of ever obtaining work at Bridgewater State University. True also is the fact that you did not and still do not express an iota of intellectual curiosity, regarding my unique course proposal or The American Dissident, which includes as subscribers Harvard U, Buffalo U, Yale U, Johns Hopkins U, Brown U, and U of Wisconsin (U Mass with its rigid anti-democracy PC speech codes and professors will not subscribe). You seem to abhor what is not in the academic pot, including especially visceral questioning and challenging of the multiculti dogma, as well as the nature of department chairperson as institutional apparatchik, as opposed to champion of freedom of speech. Moreover, with that regard, you manifest a typical academic disdain for vigorous debate and freedom of expression, cornerstones of a thriving democracy—certainly not the kind in place at Bridgewater State and most other universities. The proof of that assertion lies in your very statement that if a job opening existed you would be “very reluctant” to offer me the position. And that is your shame, as well as the likely shame of the large majority of your colleagues. Clearly, any such unusual questioning and challenging (your hiring process will of course work to eliminate that) will automatically be met by epithet, as in “hysterical in tone,” “condescending,” “embarrassing,” and lacking in “rhetorical savvy.” Epithet will not, of course, eliminate the pertinent questions raised. Rejecting those questions, as if they did not exist, will only serve to weaken you and the multitudes like you. 

As for Christopher Hitchens, my interest was not at all in the superficial quality of his being a “great stylist” or whatever. Style, rhetorical savvy, tone, metaphor, and other such superficial formes tend to interest academics because focus on such things detracts from the fond or lack thereof. What interested me was his ability to, now and then, make some excellent quotable remarks, including: “The noble title of ‘dissident’ must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.” With that regard, I have certainly sacrificed my academic career. My writing and publishing have often RISKED, a concept you probably cannot even comprehend. What I have not done is sacrifice truth in an effort to climb academic ladders, as you clearly must have done and do—what’s next dean? I have sought to speak and write truth. By speaking and writing truth, where most dare not, I have been ostracized, censored, and banned, while numerous publishing, teaching, and grant opportunities have been lost. Yet I would not have it any other way. 

You state: “How could you teach issues of audience when you yourself have no sense of audience?” What I’d teach is not “issues of audience,” whatever that might be, but rather literature, democracy, and dissidence. It is true that my goal is not to gain a “sense of audience” or even an audience. My goal, as mentioned, is to“go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson). Clearly, such a goal sadly tends to conflict directly with that of obtaining a job in academe and climbing that ladder. The deplorable proliferation of democracy-scorning or apathetic careerists in the ranks of the professoriate has clearly resulted in that conflict. 

These things said, I do not hate you or academics in general. Questioning and challenging you and them should never be equated with hatred, but rather with democracy. Now, how about inviting me to speak to your students on an alternative possibility for literature, that is, democracy and dissidence? A number of writers, now anointed in academe’s literary canon, have touched upon this theme. Note Orwell, Emerson, Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn, Villon, Rushdie, Saro-Wiwa, and Primo Levy. What I’d like to speak to your students about is what I’ve been doing over the past several decades, that is, questioning and challenging authorities, be they academic, library, cultural council, or whichever, then creating literature from it. On The American Dissident website you can read over 50 student comments regarding their meeting with me. Why shelter public-university students from this literary alternative? Do you not do them a clear disservice by doing so? 

Finally, experience dictates me to suspect you will have little backbone for this kind of discussion. After all, it cannot possibly be useful for you in the ladder-climbing endeavor. But please surprise me if at all possible. To date, only one English professor has done so. How conflictual your interest in anarchism! 

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[No further response was ever received from Benjamin Carson, who evidently was not a fervent believer in vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy.]

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From: George Slone
To: "dmohlerfaria@bridgew.edu"
Cc: "greg@thefire.org" ; "fire@thefire.org" ; "benjamin.carson@bridgew.edu" ; "comment@bridgew.edu"
Sent: Sunday, January 1, 2012 10:52 AM
Subject: Red light university et al

Dear President Dana Mohler-Faria, Bridgewater State University:

Why is Bridgewater State still a red light university (see http://thefire.org/spotlight/codes/2595.html)? To refresh your memory, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education gave your institution that designation because it had “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” 

Is it not high time to change that deplorable situation? Is it not high time to accord prime importance to freedom of speech, truth, and democracy, as opposed to multiculti ideology, diversity, and civility? After all, yours is an institution of purported higher learning. Why not strive to be unique in Academe, instead of mere copycat imitator? Why not be a real leader and create an Office of Institutional Democracy at Bridgewater State and appoint a dean to lead it? What a wonderful example that would make for your students! After all, every college and university in America today possesses an Office of Institutional Diversity, but as far as I can tell not one has created an Office of Institutional Democracy. 

Why not be unique in academe and focus your efforts on creating an ambiance favorable to freedom of expression and truth, as well as heralding those who dare speak it, no matter what color or ethnic background. After all, what does it matter if a particular academic department consists of a mosaic of colors and ethnicities, but not a single professor with the courage to speak truth openly as he or she may perceive it? When university departments are replete with collegial, conformist careerists—black, white, male, female, lesbian, transsexual, Asian, African, Hispanic, Iranian and other—bent on avoiding offensive discourse at all costs, though especially to the truth, and never questioning and challenging the usual reigning politically-correct doctrine, how can democracy not be adversely affected? How can student education not be adversely affected? 

Vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, is under assault in the nation’s colleges and universities, which one would have normally expected to actually share and embrace that cornerstone. Should we admire someone for the mere color of his skin or her ethnic background or should we admire someone because he or she behaved as Solzhenitsyn, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, George Orwell, Pierre Falardeau, Kenule Saro-Wiwa, Francois Villon, Ghandi, or Pablo Neruda? 

Finally, as publisher of The American Dissident, I’d be more than happy to speak to your students on the subject. Unfortunately, your English Department chairperson, Benjamin Carson, refuses to invite me. In fact, he refuses to even express an iota of curiosity regarding The American Dissident or the course I created, “Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence.” (My chances for an adjunct teaching position at your institution are nil because of my openly expressed opinions. Moreover, it is highly likely that your student editors will not publish this letter due to PC indoctrination.) In fact, not one state college or university in Massachusetts will subscribe to the journal, yet Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Brown, as well as other universities do. Moreover, Professor Dan Sklar at Endicott College has been inviting me for the past four years each semester to talk to his students on literature, democracy, and dissidence. He is the only English professor, out of the numerous professors I’ve contacted over the past decade, who has thus far proven curious and interested. 

Thank you for your attention. 

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From: George Slone
To: "benjamin.carson@bridgew.edu"
Cc: "comment@bridgew.edu"
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1:51 PM
Subject: Satirical Cartoon on Benjamin D. Carson

Benjamin,
Attached is a cartoon I just finished. You may comment on it if you like at my blogsite where it is currently posted. See http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/01/benjamin-carson.html. NO comments are ever deleted. Thank you for your attention.
G. Tod

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From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: comment@bridgew.edu
Subject: Censorship at Bridgewater et al
Date: Sun, 13 May 2012 08:46:09 -0400

To the Student Editor of Comment:

Since Bridgewater State is a public university in Massachusetts and I am a citizen in the same state, perhaps you might be open to publishing the attached letter and cartoon. By the way, I have been a professor for the last three decades. For a state university student editor, you seem unusually open in your resisting of administrative efforts to CENSOR the student newspaper. I applaud you for that, although you did not bother responding to the criticism I sent last January. It has been my experience that most student newspapers serve as nothing but PR-organs of image-bolstering. I would perhaps be interested in publishing an article with regards the attempts to CENSOR you. Your April 25^th editorial on this was most interesting. Also, I notice a representative of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education will be speaking at your university next week. Interestingly, the criticism I’d sent you over four months ago emphasizes the terrible red-light rating given to Bridgewater by that organization. Perhaps you would now reconsider publishing the criticism in The Comment. That criticism was also sent to the president of the university, as well as the chairperson of the English Department. Neither of those persons bothered to respond. Below is the open letter to the president. Please also consult the cartoon I drew on the English Department chairperson at http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/01/benjamin-carson.html. Why would you not publish it in The Comment? Thank you for your attention.

hass

It was sad to discover, in Kevin Kiley’s “Occupy Someone Else” article, which recently appeared in Inside Higher Ed (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/09/public-universities-question-why-they-not-lawmakers-are-protesters-target), that the Occupy Cal and other Occupy university and college movements were apparently nothing more than protests about MONEY.  It was sad to note Kiley didn’t even evoke or think about that low-point in academe.   Might it be cocoon living—far from the edge—that blinds so? 

Nevertheless, perhaps I shouldn’t have been at all surprised by the Occupy Cal and other university protests over tuition-rate increases,  since most citizens—students and professors certainly included—seem only willing to stand up (albeit in herd formation) when MONEY is concerned.   

Regarding the ivory tower, students ought to be protesting instead against the dubious see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil ostrich-head-in-the-sand behavior of the large majority of their sinecured professors, not to mention the rampant intellectual corruption, including the widespread professorial-effort to restrict, if not kill, the First Amendment on public campuses and spread PC multiculti-ideology like a noose round the neck of truth and democracy. 

Mention those free-speech restricting codes, censorship of ideas and comments, and rampant self-censorship to students and most—the very large majority of them—will likely be uninformed and simply uninterested.  The same goes for their professors, at least those not directly involved in instituting the codes of civility and good taste.    

Financial concerns always motivate.  Threats against democracy rarely seem to do that.  Why didn’t students protest against the University of California’s 1.6 million dollar political contribution to the Obama presidential campaign in 2008?  Should a public-university system be manifesting such egregious Democrat Party bias as Obama’s number-one donor?   Indeed, in doing so, how can it possibly argue that it is a partisan of diversity of thought and opinion? 

In fact, if the Occupy movements were to have had any tangible success at all, they should have been focused 100% on Obama.  They should have put the president to the fuckin’ wall, make him either fulfill his hollow campaign promises of transparency, ending corporate lobbying, and war, or make him fully understand that Occupy would then campaign 100% against his re-election.   They should have put him and Pelosi to the wall to get legislation to end corporate bailouts, congressional insider trading, reduce the high salaries of multi-millionaire senators and congressmen, reduce their high pensions and favorable health-care benefits, and otherwise stop the influence the megawealthy Wall Street financiers continue to have on the Democrat-Party regime.  

Robert Hass

Occupy the Academy of American Poets

Unsurprisingly, Robert Hass paints a glowing self-portrait in his NY Times article, “Poet-Bashing Police”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/at-occupy-berkeley-beat-poets-has-new-meaning.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=robert%20hass&st=cse), regarding the spread of the Occupy movement to the University of California, Berkeley, and the police violence against protesters.  Hass and wife (Brenda Hillman), both established-order poets, decided to step out of their comfy wainscoted offices to check it out and were kicked around a bit.

Hass has it quite easy:  a sinecure of tenure at Berkeley as poet professor.  As former Poet Laureate of the US Library of Congress—how many asses did he have to kiss and blind eyes did he have to turn to rise to that level?—and chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he is clearly a ladder-climbing poet, as opposed to a daring Emersonian rude-truth telling one. 

In the article, which wouldn’t have been published if authored by an unsinecured, unknown poet, Hass mentions the Free Speech Movement back in the 60s at Berkeley, as if somehow that rubbed off positively on him.  The established-order poetry and academic machine, upon which he proudly sucks the teat, however, detests free speech and expression, especially when such freedom might expose the intrinsic corruption within that machine and/or endanger its funding.  

Why didn’t Hass mention in his article the speech-restricting codes in place throughout the University of California (see http://thefire.org/spotlight/codes/220.html)?  Did he help enact them? 

Why did he prove entirely apathetic when I contacted him several years ago regarding the censorship of my comments by the Academy of American Poets, not to mention its banning me, a poet, from participating in its forums?  Evidently, the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex, with which he forms an integral part, detests free speech and expression.  Any simple experiment with that regard will likely prove the point.  Criticism of any of its institutions and cogs will usually result in silence and/or outright ostracizing.  That’s been the normal result regarding the numerous experiments in democracy I’ve performed regarding the Complex.  The various blog entries on The American Dissident blog site serve as proof of the assertion.   

Would Hass stand up to protest against National Poetry Week’s refusal to list The American Dissident, the 501 c3 nonprofit literary journal of which this blog is part, with other such journals listed?  Of course not!  Would he stand up to protest against the NEA’s refusal to accord me more information, besides the vague comment “low” and “poor” regarding its rejection of my funding request for the journal?  Of course not!

It has been my experience that ladder-climbing academic poets prefer silence when confronted with uncomfortable truths, as in censorship and banning in their very midst and effected by their very colleagues and friends. 

Would Hass stand up to protest against PEN’s refusal to respond to my diverse free-speech grievances?  Of course not!  Would he stand up to protest against the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom’s refusal to respond to my objection regarding the banning of The American Dissident by several public libraries?  Of course not!  

What Hass egregiously, if not incredulously, though quite unsurprisingly, fails to mention in his article is any reference whatsoever to the fat hand that feeds him, that is, to the university administrators who evidently must have requested police presence at Berkeley in the first place.  It is my humble opinion that famous actors, musicians, politicians, wealthy academic writers like Cornell West and sinecured poets like Hass ought to keep their mouths shut regarding any of the Occupy movements.  When they seek to participate in them or opine favorably about them, they end up robbing the movements' very credibility.  When they do enter into the fray, how can one not perceive the hypocrisy of spread the wealth and opportunities, yeah, but not mine? 

How not to feel a bit of joy knowing that Hass was kicked around a bit on campus?  And how not to wonder if his wife is nuts?  Who else but a fruitloop would be lecturing cops they should be at home reading to their children?  Maybe she should have been at home with her husband, having children teach THEM about the First Amendment. 

The question remains:  How does a self-proclaimed "activist" like Hass manage to turn a convenient blind eye to corruption and censorship in his milieu?  
The answer remains:  deafening silence...

Christian Wiman

“Provocative” and “Upsetting”… Yet Somehow Safe 
For Bourgeois Consumption:  Poetry Magazine

As editor of a literary magazine, I receive periodic mail from Poetry, asking for money despite its $100 million drug-financed foundation.  Periodically, I stuff the envelope it sends not with money but with a broadside critical of poetry.  To date, I have received no response.  The poets involved with Poetry magazine, including its editor Christian Wiman, evidently live in safe-house cocoons.  They generally have money and security and are often careerist academics. 

In the most recent envelope sent by Poetry, an unbelievably nauseating hagiographic two-page essay by Adam Kirsch, “Poetry Magazine’s Rebirth,” was included. Kirsch notes regarding the magazine that “in its fabled early years helped to establish poetry as a serious American art.”  Allow me to replace “serious” with bourgeois.  Well, Kirsch does mention “stolidly institutional.”  Perhaps that phrase is even more revolting than the term bourgeois in its implication of being run by literary apparatchiks.  It certainly explains why the magazine’s editor and staff don’t seem to give a damn about issues of literary ostracizing and censorship, unless of course a famous poet is concerned.  They don’t give a damn that National Poetry Month (Boston) and Massachusetts Poetry Festival, for example, refuse to even respond to my requests that the magazine I edit be included on their lists of literary magazines.  They don’t give a damn that PEN New England refuses to respond to my freedom-of-expression grievances.  They don’t give a damn that the American Library Association’s “Library Bill of Rights”—specifically article II, “Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues.l”—is perhaps violated by public libraries across the country.  As an example, Sturgis Library, the oldest public library in the country, subscribes to Poetry, but refuses to even accept a free donation to the magazine I edit, which presents poetry as highly dissident and thus at antipodes to the highly bourgeois verse presented by the former.    

Kirsch goes on to note regarding Poetry that “its age and prestige mean America’s best poets have always been glad to publish there” without questioning in the least what “best” might reply imply (e.g., well-connected, unthreatening to the established order, and academic).  Sadly, the “literary fruits” stemming from the monetary load dropped upon Poetry by the famous drug company will simply serve to bolster and otherwise assure the iron-clad bourgeois grip on poetry.  As a dissident poet, openly and highly critical of that grip, I was invited only once to read poetry despite my persistent contacting of places that periodically invite poets (e.g., libraries, writing centers, and colleges).  That money will serve to make Poetry the prime literary gatekeeper in America.  And gatekeepers, as we all know, serve as censors, assuring bourgeois propriety and good taste—just what poetry needs, n’est-ce pas?  Yes, that money will indeed put Poetry at the center of American poetry. 

Kirsch notes regarding the magazine that “it has become one of the most interesting literary periodicals of any kind published today.”  But “interesting” is a highly subjective term, not objective.  Kirsch bases his evaluation on quantity:  from a circulation of 11,000 in 2003 to 27,000.  Popularity thus equals “interesting” in his mind.  And that’s fine, but should that factor be applied to poetry?  One could also wonder, though Kirsch doesn’t, how many of those copies are given away.  Money certainly enables Poetry to reign in regards to circulation.    

Kirsch goes on to praise editor Wiman, comparing him to Joshua, though Jesus would probably have been even better.   But, well, Wiman has 100 million dollars at his disposal.  So, Jesus was out of the question.  Thanks to Wiman, we’re informed, “Poetry has done what so few magazines of literary and political opinion ever dare: It has confronted its readers with new, potentially upsetting ideas.”  Oh, my!  Well, again, he doesn’t have to worry about losing subscribers.  But what might constitute “upsetting”?  Would this essay be upsetting… or rather too upsetting to publish?  

Kirsch tells us that the origins of the new version of the old magazine can be found in Dana Gioia’s 1991 essay “Can Poetry Matter.”  Gioia, however, was a poet bureaucrat in charge of the NEA, which is manned and womaned by cultural bureaucrats.  Kirsch mentions that the key solution in that essay was to decloister poetry from the confines of academe and to “address and care about the common reader.”  Now, that’s a good one.  In fact, I wrote a satirical dialogue several years ago on the “common reader.”  Somebody had criticized me for not writing for the “common reader.”  So I’d asked who the common reader was?  Would the common reader understand what I write here?  How might I better address the uncommon reader?  Should I use common vocabulary and common themes to attract the “common reader’?  If so, what were those themes?  The notion of a “common reader” is of course absurd.  In fact, the “common reader” likely never reads poetry at all and would hardly think of lifting Poetry off of a library shelf.  Perhaps he or she would pick up People magazine or the Boston Herald.  The “common reader” idea was nothing but a transparent ploy to propagate a veneer that poetry was somehow not in the hands of elite bourgeois poets. 

            Because of Poetry and other such well-distributed literary magazines like Agni, New Letters,  Ploughshares, and on and on, poetry would remain a filler item of the type published in The New Yorker, hardly, in Kirsch’s words, “the highest branch of literature.”  The contradictions in Kirsh’s essay are egregious.  For Poetry to suggest that the “entrenched institutions of the poetry world are stultifying” is in itself absurd, since Poetry represents one such entrenched institution.  Why does Wiman on the one hand decry the professionalizaion of poetry while publishing so many professional poets?  Where is the sense in that?  Kirsch notes that the poetry in each issue of the magazine is generally of a “high standard” without mentioning what that means or rather implies.  And again, one must emphasize safe for bourgeois consumption.  Finally, Kirsch notes that Poetry is “intelligently provocative.”  Hmm…

Fitchburg State College--Free Speech in Peril

[Surprise!  Not one of the following responded:  "thepointfsu@gmail.com" ; "greg@thefire.org" ; "mbruun@fitchburgstate.edu" ; "rdinda@fsc.edu" ; "jfiske@fitchburgstate.edu" ; "mjaramillo@fsc.edu" ; "wjeffko@fsc.edu" ; "swadsworth@fsc.edu" swadsworth@fsc.edu]

To James Sullivan, Boston Globe Correspondant:
Your article “At Fitchburg State: A History Lesson Rekindled” (http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/09/15/fitchburg-state-history-lesson-rekindled/2DZ1V3MgFbutrtWZqS0SmN/story.xmlon) grabbed my eyeballs… big time! As a former Fitchburg tenure track professor, I battled against administrative and faculty corruption in 1995-6. Because of that corruption, I won a year’s salary as settlement during my fifth and final year at the college. What was truly disturbing, however, was my inability to interest the student newspaper to cover my story. It would not even note that I was evicted from my office mid-semester and had to have all my classes rescheduled. One professor, Jeannette Scharf, who is now dead, had complained she was afraid of me. Yet, I had and still have no criminal record whatsoever. The Boston Globe and Fitchburg Sentinel and Enterprise wouldn’t cover the story either. To this day, I could be arrested if I step foot on McKay Campus. Dean Nowotny refused to rescind that order. It is shameful that your article seemed to depict Fitchburg as some kind of Free Speech and democracy advocate. How absurd!

Over the years, I’ve contacted the college’s student newspaper, requesting it to cover my story. To date, student editors refuse to respond to my emails. Some of the old corrupt cronies are still at the college, including Shirley Wagner. Some of the cowardly professors are still entrenched in the Humanities Department, including Walter Jeffko, Susan Wadsworth, Robin Dinda, Jane Fiske, and Maria Jaramillo. It is sad that these professors are unaware that democracy depends on courageous individuals who dare stand up alone if necessary. Other corrupt cronies have become honorable (?) professor emeriti, including Harry Semerjian and Richard DeCesare. Still others, the cowards and phonies are implanted in the Humanities Department.

As a direct result of my horrendous experience at Fitchburg, I ended up creating The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence. For actual documents et al regarding corruption at FSC, take a look at the journal’s website, in particular, www.theamericandissident.org/FitchburgStateCollege.htm.

In reality, it is thanks to that corruption that I’ve become highly critical of higher education and highly creative. If I’d gotten tenure at that joint, I would probably be fat, fluffy, and pensioned today, and wouldn’t have ended up as a hardcore dissident writer and cartoonist, nor would I have had the interesting opportunity to teach several years in Louisiana, several in North Carolina, several stints on two US Navy battleships, six months on Martha’s Vineyard Island, etc. So, bitter I am certainly not. Nevertheless, I will always raise my voice when confronted with the kind of hypocrisy Fitchburg manifests. Now, when will it be inviting me to one of its Constitution Day forums… to talk about the corrupt president Vinny Mara et al? No, I shan’t be holding my breath.

            By the way, Fitchburg has been accorded the red light designation regarding free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (see http://thefire.org/spotlight/codes/734.html) . That designation is the worst designation. “A red light university has at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” Now, why aren’t the student newspaper editors covering that story? And why won’t the university’s Constitution Day forum evoke it? Now, will the Boston Globe cover my story? Nope!     

Dawn M. Formo

Open Letter to the Writing Faculty, Cal State at San Marcos
A cartoon depicting Assistant Dean and Writing Professor Dawn M. Formo is currently on The American Dissident blogsite (http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/). It was drawn after Dr. Formo refused to respond to my grievance of being censored by InsideHigherEd.com regarding the article she authored, “Think Like a Colleague.” Thus, I write you in the hope that perhaps one of you might actually be against censorship in academe and even have the courage to speak out against it at your own institution. Rare, of course, that would be. After all, the academic culture demands that “successful” college professors and students learn to wear the muzzle and blinders, rationalize censorship and speech codes, and disdain vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. Indeed, the culture demands that new professors “think like a colleague,” that is, see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. Such a culture fosters backslapping, self-congratulating, cowardice, groupthink, and kowtowing, not to mention corruption (intellectual and other). Sadly, student newspaper editors tend to follow in the dubious footsteps of their professors. Moreover, the academic culture seems to have replaced vigorous debate and truth telling with doctrinaire diversity, vacuous civility, and multiculturalism. Your institution, for example, has a Diversity, Social Justice, and Equity Project, but not a Democracy and Free Speech Project. It has a Civility Initiative, but no Initiative for Courageous Truth Telling. In fact, the Civility Initiative appears astoundingly childish and the pledge orientation students take amazingly fascist. Should the mission of a university be to foster your “civility principles of care, respect and empathy,” or should it rather be to foster the questioning and challenging of your very initiatives and projects, the courage to stand up and speak the “rude truth” (Emerson’s words), no matter how offensive, and the building of backbone (as opposed to a nanny mentality) so necessary for survival in this tough world of ours? Well, I know what you likely think… and now you know what I think. One must wonder whether each student after their civility pledge (do faculty also take these pledges?) be given a teddy bear, then urged to enjoin in a hugging session? What has happened to the university today? Quite simply it seems to have been hijacked by marms and nannies. I really hope somebody on campus is lampooning your initiatives and projects, though I doubt there is. Finally, please ask your librarian to subscribe (only $20/year) to The American Dissident, a 501 c3 journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence. Your students will likely get a kick out of it. And it will give them another window into what writing can be. Not one university or college in California subscribes, yet Harvard, Yale, Brown, Johns Hopkins, Buffalo U, Wisconsin U and U of Michigan, amongst others, are subscribers. Comments on the blog are never censored… no matter how damning! Students are encouraged to express themselves, as opposed to what they think some civility initiative wants them to express. BTW, contrary to popular opinion, curiosity did not in fact kill the cat, civility killed him! Then curiosity made him stronger and more creative, though less adept at “thinking like a colleague” and otherwise fitting into academic teddy-bear culture. Thank you for your attention.

Charles Simic

Poet Laureate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce