September 1992 - Discover the Networks

PAGE 2E d i t o r i a l S t a f fEditorsPeter CollierDavid HorowitzLiterary EditorJohn EllisLayout/artShay MarloweOperations DirectorJudd MagilnickAssistantsSheri AnnisTracey BurgessBill CervenyLisa MaguireContributorsDavid Berlinski is a mathematician and novelistK. L. Billingsley was the author of Queer Studies"in the May issueJohn Milleris an intern at The New RepublicGary Saul Morson is a Professor of RussianLiterature at NorthwesternAndrew Wachtelis a Professor at NorwthwesternCathy Young is a freelance writerHETERODOXY is published by the Centerfor the Study of Popular Culture. The Center isa California 501 (c) 3. Editorial: (916) 265-9306. Fax:(916) 265-3119. Subscription: 12issues $25. Send checks to Heterodoxy, 12400Ventura Blvd. Studio City, California 91604.Visa and MasterCard accepted. Inquiries:800-752-6562Heterodoxy is distributed to bookstoresand newsstands by Bernhard B. DeBoer Inc.,113 East Centre Street, Nutley, NJ. 07110COMING UPDaddy's Gay RoommateLeftwing FoundationsThe Hollywood Ten(most obnoxious)The Greening of the RedmanRemove my name immediately from your mailing list. Itsquite obvious that all of you are pathetic, scared, mostly male,whites afraid to let go of the silver spoon you were born within your mouth — it belongs in your ass.Peter A. Kouides, M.D.You idiots! I'm a radical feminist and despise your racistpicture on page one. Get me off your mailing list.Margaret CruickshankSan FranciscoLast week I found an unsolicited copy of your "trashy" paperin my mailbox. I do not know how I got on your pervertedmailing list, but if you ever send me any more of your garbageI will not only file a complaint with the Postmaster but alsowith the FBI and the City of Alendora Police.Richard M. BertholfYou fellows have one driving motivation—you want to freeyourself from your mothers' all-encompassing vaginas. Fearand hatred of females oozes from this publication. It's surprisingto know that my anatomy scares you so. You folks areattempting to turn back the tide of an inevitable social transformation.You won't win. You've already had 4,000 years atthe helm and the order you attempted to create is rotting. It'stime for change.Susan NunnYou criticize Catherine MacKinnon extensively. Why? Becauseshe is strong? Capable? Articulate? And she is infinitelymore published than you? Then you praise profuselyCamille Paglia, who sold out women to get tenure, whosecretly wants to dry hump Madonna. The world is changing.You simply have to put your tiny penises back in your pantsand accept it.Another tenured female Harvard GraduateI thought you might be interested to know that you have alesbian, vegan, PC-bashing libertarian among your newsubscribers (and no, I'm not ugly). Good work!Love,Karen McNeilOakland, CAThanks for the inspiration to work harder against you.What in the name of reason does your misogynist gang offrightened little boys expressing their neurotic castrationfears in Heterodoxy have to do with the study of popularculture? I oppose male violence and male privilege, soplease take me off your mailing list.L. JenscsonEugene, OR.After 4 years of college and 4 years of law school(8 years of political correctness) Heterodoxy is the firstpublication I've read that doesn't make me feel ashamedto be what I cannot help being — a white male. I lookforward to the next issue.Bob WilbertI' ve enjoyed Heterodoxy so much since subscribing to itthat I'm sending you some more money to ke4ep theenterprise going. You are a great thorn in the side ofjust the right people here on the Texas campus.Robert D. KingDean of LiberalArts University ofTexasKudos of (almost) every sort to Heterodoxy! My mirthwas boundless when I gazed upon Mr. Shay's depictionof Mars as dominatrix.Mona HollandNotre Dame(Ed: Thanks, but it's Ms. Shay.)I once sold Ramparts an article on catchingundercover agents. My wife's and my conversion toconservatism began in the early '70's while "returningto the land" in Northwest Arkansas. Appealing for foodstamps to a paraplegic Vietnam veteran who was workingas a screener in that office shamed me enough that Ibuckled down and got serious about making a living.From there it was all uphill, but I am much the better forit. I now manage the largest "Choose and Cut"Christmas tree farm in Southern California, near MagicMountain in Valencia, and suffer karmic kick-backsfrom the likes of Tom Hayden and his league of antipesticidescrewballs. Oh well. I look at them like weeds andaphids —just another pest to deal with, hoping the EPAwill soon register a product for their control.Mike Milligan

PAGE 3FEMIINIST ENGAGED TO BE RAPED BYINTELLECTUAL GIGOLO: In a match Madein heaven, Catharine MacKinnon, feministextraordinaire and censorious Michigan lawprofessor, recently announced her betrothal toJeffrey Moussaief Masson of Freud ArchiveFollies. Suggested gift for the bride: A year'ssupply of Harlequin romances. For the groom: thecollected works of JanetERRATA: In our last reductio column anitem was garbled by a dropped sentence. In1991 the University of Amherst at Massachusettsdropped a clause of its Affirmative A-tion andNondiscrimination Policy which specified thatits protections "shall not include personswhose sexual orientation includes minorchildren as the sex object." By droppingthe clause the University appears to besaying that pedophilia is protected andpolitically correct to boot.DID RONALD REAGAN SAYTHIS? "Liberty will not be fooled. Therecan be no coexistence between democracyand the totalitarian state system. There canbe no coexistence between market economyand powers who control everything andevery-one.... The experience of the past decadeshas taught us communism has nohuman face. Freedom and communism areincompatible." No. It was RussianPresident Boris Yeltsin in his address to theU.S. Congress.TOM HAYDEN GETS RELIGION:Returning from the Earth Summit in Riothis spring, California state legislator TomHayden announced he had discovered anew "Earth Gospel": "It struck me that ifan Earth theology followed the exampleof liberation theology, the mountain[above Rio] would be symbolic of thebody of Christ, crucified. And nearby,Pontius Pilate was addressing the United Na-POLITICALLY INCORRECTNEWS STORY: Alice Springs,Australia (AP) "Aborigines attacked threepoliceman with frozen kangaroo tails in aremote Northern Territory town— then atethe evidence, a court was told today. SeniorConstable Mark Coffey told Alice SpringsCourt that the three officers were attackedThursday by 15 aborigines carrying frozenkangaroo tails bought at a local store. The officers,who were also pelted with rocks, suffered cutsand bruises but were not seriously injured. Six menwere arrested and charged with assault. But a policespokesman said the kangaroo tails won't beintroduced as evidence because it is believedthey were eaten by the aborigines."— Submittedby reader John Knowlton.ANOTHER POLITICALLY INCORRECTSTORY: Houston (AP) University of Houstonofficials have said they will appeal a ruling thata Russian immigrant was expelled from the school'sgraduate history program because of his ideas,not his performance, State District Judge DonWittig on Monday ruled in favor of FabianVaksman, 37. Vaksman has waged a three-yearstate and federal court battle seeking to completehis doctorate in history. Vaksman said he fellinto disfavor with the department because hevigorously asserted anti-Marxist views. Thisconflicted with the orthodox Marxist philosophyhe said had been prevalent among many historyprofessors.REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUMDIALECTICAL MATERIAL GIRL: In the prefaceto a new book, The Madonna Connection, whichfeatures the latest academic word on the pop starand the growing craze for post-Madonna Studies,editor Kathy Schwichtenberg writes: "This volumedemonstrates Madonna's usefulness as a paradigmcase to advance further developments in culturaltheory." Among these developments are MelanieMorton's Marxist view that Madonna undermines"capitalist constructions [and] rejects corebourgeois epitomes" and ProfessorMarjorie Garber's analysis of Madonna'stendency to grab her crotch: "[It] emblematize[s]the Lacanian triad of having, being, and seeming."TEN WACKIEST REDUX: One of the feminists whorecently made the Heterodoxy list of the 10 wackiestfeminists, Teresa De Lauretis, Professor of theHistory of Consciousness at Santa Cruz, has won afellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation for "afeminist re-evaluation of Freud's theory ofsexuality." Freud said that laughter explodes thetension of unpleasant situations.A POLITICAL CORRECTNESS CONUNDRUM:In May, the Maui County Council (Hawaii) tabledan ordinance that would ban the backyard killing ofdogs because of opposition by some groups that such aban would be discriminatory based on theirreligious tradition of eating dogs. From "News of theWeird" by Chuck Shepherd.APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA: "My early lifewas privileged, sheltered, fairly unpolitical.However, my first year at Bowdoin I discovered'feminism'...Within a few years I went from beingintimidated by the big feminists on campus tobeing an intimidating big feminist on campus. My lifesaw other changes as well. I went from havingboyfriends to having girlfriends. My fantasy changedfrom wanting to get married, settle down, and havekids to wanting to move in with a woman, settledown and have kids. I went from being a closet case, tobeingout to a few friends and family members, to beingout, loud, and proud to all my family, friends, and thecampus." From The Village Voice.ANOTHER SUCCESS OF THE DUMB SHITLIBERATION MOVEMENT: The followingdocument is provided by the State of New York topeople taking its real estate license test: "Yourexamination application slip will be marked eitherPASSED or FAILED and returned to you by mail.Numerical scores are not given to prevent possiblediscriminatory employment practices based onachievement levels."EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION: NewYork State Bill #A10121A specifiesThe Hand that Rocks the Cradlethe following as its justification: "This bill amendsvarious sections of the education law to changethe term "physician's' in the title of physician'sassistant to the non-possessive term "physician'...Justification: Simply stated, a physician assistant isnot a physical possession of the physician. Thephysician holds no ownership rights, or interestover a physician assistant.... Thus, the correctterminology in New York State should bephysician assistant rather than physician'sassistant."THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE: The Teachersfor a Democratic Culture held its first meeting atHunter College last spring. Towards the end of themeeting Eleanor Gilpatrick urged that in alldisputed issues whether over curriculum, tenure, oruniversity policy, "We should bring to the discussionas high a level of political correctness as ispossible."SPIKE'S GOTTA HAVE IT: Late in August,filmmaker/hustler Spike Lee called on Afro-American students to cut school when his multimillion agitepic "X" (for Malcolm X) opens inNovember. If Lee cared about the plight of blackyouth he would have offered a free pass to allstudents with perfect attendance records. But Lee'sfocus is on the box office receipts andall that cash flowing in from "X" fashions featuringthe first commandment of his success: by anymeans necessary.HARASSMENT HIGH: The School Board of theNicolet High School District, governing the mostprestigious high school in the state of Wisconsin hasadopted a harassment policy which identifies notonly the usual "protected categories" — race, sex,sexual orientation — but adds criminals. "TheNicolet High School District is committed to fair andequal employment opportunity for every personregardless of age, race, color,...handicap, maritalstatus, sex, sexual orientation....arrest record,conviction record..."Intimidation and harassment can arisefrom a broad range of physical or verbalbehavior (by employees, non-employees orstudents) which can include, but is not limitedto, the following:* Physical or mental abuse* Racial, ethnic or religious insults orslurs* Unwelcome sexual advances ortouching...* Displays or sexually explicit or otherwise offensive posters, calendars,or materials♦Referring to another person as a girl, hunk,doll, babe, or honey* Making sexual gestures with handsor body movements* Intentionally standing close or brushing up against another person* Inappropriately staring at anotherperson or touching his or her clothing,hair or body* Asking personal questions aboutanother person's sexual life* Repeatedly asking out a person whohas stated that he or she is not interested..."An employee or supervisor may be heldindividually liable as a harasser and subject tothe same penalties which may be imposed uponemployers under state or federal law. Astudent harasser may be subject to individualliability and discipline."These kids may never graduate.HARASSMENT UNIVERSITY: FloridaState University is being terrorized by studentthugs who call themselves the Loyal Order of the99 and dress in combat boots, military berets, andcamouflaged fatigues. The Loyal Order is a militantfaction within the Black Students Union. In May, the"Minister of Education" of the Loyal Order came to aStudent Government Association wielding a baseballbat and demanding that the Association double thealready astronomical budget of the Black StudentAssociation to $60,000. Said the Minister: "Bleedgreen dollars now or red blood later. We can have ariot at this university too." No university officialwas heard to condemn this behavior. Perhaps theyare afraid that calling this for what it is—ashakedown by a bunch of street thugs — would landthem in front of the racial harassment court.PROSE THAT MIGHT HAVE APPEARED ONTHE WALL OF THE HOUSTON BAKERBATHROOM: Revolutionary Greetings to Allthe Sisters and Brothers Who Have Risen Up inRighteous Rebellion in L.A.! Forward fromrebellion to the all-the-way-liberating ProletarianRevolution! -—Message from Bob Avakian,Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party,U.S.A.

PAGE 4SENSITIVITY POLICELLETS HAVE THE MENconducted workshops at many high schools ;corporations across the country, and at universitiesSTAND here and the women oversuch as Harvard, Virginia Commonwealth andthere," said Edwin J. Nichols, a blackthe University of North Carolina. According tomale of late middle age who is touted by someVisions' Angela Bryant, a lawyer, fees begin atuniversity administrators as one of the best$1,000, per consultant, per day and work on a"sliding scale according to what the market willsensitivity trainers in the business. "I want youbear. Visions' 25 consultants, 5 of whom are fullto stand and tell everyone where you earnedtime, include all races along with lesbians and gays.your BA."Visions' materials define racism as "theSome of the 3000 or so academics at thesystematic oppression of people of color."University of Cincinnati may have felt a little silly butRacism, in Visions' lexicon, means "white racism,"they all dutifully complied with the order. This was aand not just the overt variety practiced by the KKKmandatory workshop, after all. Nichols then told alland Aryan brothers. Intent may be a defense in thethose who had received their degrees from any but theworld of the law, but it is irrelevant in the world ofmost prestigious private schools to sit. After this, hethe sensitivity trainer. Whites are being racist,told everyone to sit except those with Masters' degrees,then those with PhDs. Finally, only one personsupporting the status quo."says Bryant, "by getting up every morning andwas left standing, an attractive blonde who hadAsked whether blacks can be racists inearned three degrees from three prestigious privateNigeria or Ghana, where they hold power andschools.control every-thing, Bryant says "Not in my opinion.""Here we have a member of the privilegedShe concedes that blacks can be "prejudiced" andwhite elite," Nichols told the audience, as peoplethat "blacks in positions of power can oppress othercraned their necks to stare at the humiliated woman,people." But she stubbornly insists, "I don't choosewho had only been at the school for three weeks. Sheto use "racism to describe that."thought her ordeal was over, but after a lunch break,How will the approach that believes allthe sensitivity trainer returned to the subject. "I want towhites are guilty help solve the problem of racismhold a beauty contest," he said, but then shook hison cam-pus? "It's not about solving it right now,"head. "No, I don't think we have to hold a beautyanother Visions staffer says. "It's a very longcontest. We all know who the most beautiful woman inprocess. Racism has been there for hundreds of yearsthe room is. It's the woman with the three privateand it's going to take hundreds of years to workdegrees and the blonde hair and the blue eyes. Let'sthrough it." As in Marx's vision of the classlesshave her stand up so everybody can look at her. Look atsociety, the sensitivity Utopia exists well down atthe pearls she's wearing, her clothes, her shoes. Thisthe end of the time line leaving plenty of room foris our ideal of beauty and success. Let's have her standhistorically inevitable seminars and workshops.up so everybody can look at her."Edwin J. Nichols' standard half-day presentationruns $2500, plus travel and expenses. The pres-A silence fell over the group and heads cranedtoward the woman, who remained in her seat shakingence of an associate ups the fee another $2000 perand sobbing.day. Nichols' more extensive "cultural audit" can runfrom $8000 to $16,000. The premise of Nichols'"Cultural Awareness Training" is that the Americanpisodes like this one, which combine elementsmelting pot has failed: "There has not been a successfulAmerican ideology upon which to buildof the show trial and the show and tell session,Ehavebecome common occurrences in themeaningful interpersonal relationship models for amulticultural university. Sensitivity training is amultiethnic and pluralistic society." The "Nicholsburgeoning, multi-million dollar business which is oneParadigm" does not remedy this defect but doesof the few growth industries in an era of tightinvolve the demonstration of "unconscious culturalacademic budgets. According to Richard Whiteside ofbias that governs the decision making process."the University of California San Diego, cultural, .The Chippewa Valley Technicalgender and relational sensitivity accounts for some 40as bigots." This view is supported, perhaps unintentionally, College, the Wisconsin Board of Education, DeKalbpercent of the school's psychological services budget ofby Robert Gentry, Associate Dean of Students at UC Irvine, College and the University of Georgia are among thoseover $1 million. That would put expenditures for the statewideuniversity system at more than $10 million. Across thewho says, "There is a tremendous need [for training] all over who have shelled out big bucks for Nichols, even thoughthe state and nation. This generation of students... holds many he is unable to supply verification of all the advancednation perhaps ten or twenty times that amount is spent—nostereotypes. All these workshops provide information that is foreign degrees listed on his curriculum vitae. So did theone knows exactly how much because some of the fundingprobably more true than the propaganda that the larger society University of Cincinnati, al-though it is not clear why,for sensitivity is hidden in salaries and in programs with suchtends to teach." Chicago sensitivity consultant Tom Kochmann, since this campus fairly bristles with sensitivity. UCinnocuous titles as "human resource development."author of Black and White Styles in Conflict, acknowledges administrators are not only sensitive to race, in fact, butRoosevelt Thomas of the American Institute for ManagingDiversity charges $8,000 a day. At that rate, in a workthat there is "a lot of pressure on white males as a target obsessed with it.group." Kikanza Robbins of the Robbins Training Group Some faculty members have evidence, for instance,year of 48 weeks, he would earn nearly $2 million. Onetimeagrees that the common approach is to pit some groups against that they believe proves these administrators areUSC professor Kikanza Robbins, who now runs the Robbinsothers.unilaterally upgrading the marks of failed minorityTraining Group, began as a desegregation facilitator in theTom Kochmann says the "golden age" of sensitivity is students in an effort to keep them in school. When some1960s and worked on federal grants for 8 years. Deborahyet to come. But it has already arrived for some. The qualificationsfor sensitivity facilitator generally involve minority administration, worried about of-fending wealthy donorsUC staff wanted to bring in Louis Farrakhan, theRaupp of UCLA says that some sensitivity consultantscharge $10,000 a day, a fee to which Robbins aspires for astatus; a background in education, administration or psychology;a firm belief that everyone has something to hide when with them by offering Farrakhan on videotape. To showbut anxious to do the right thing, struck a compromise45-minute talk.Business has long used sensitivity training to familiarizeemployees with the cultural differences between theit comes to race, sex and gender; and a commitment to its zeal for minority representation, the school evenmandatory participation.recruited members of a black Toledo street gang andgroups who function together in the workplace. But in"Without these courses, how can we prepare people to installed them in a dormitory where they proceeded toworking with employees, businesses have followed an educationalparadigm, emphasizing teaching all parties to un-live in a multicultural society?" argues Tom Kochmann. "If peddle drugs and weapons and generally wreak havoc onthey were voluntary, who would attend?" Those who avoid campus.derstand each other and tolerate differences, but most of allthese programs, Kochmann says, are abusing their freedom. Mary Ellen Ashley, Vice Provost and associate Deanto recognize common bonds. If business has seen the task ofLike his colleagues in this business, Kochmann has a at Cincinnati, has functioned as a one-woman sensitivity course. Authorincreasing sensitivity as a sort of preventive medicine, thewhole set of racial theories. He says that "Anglos" are of Combating Racism on Campus, she is convinced that the Uniteduniversity seems to consider it mandatory chemotherapy for"textual" people whereas blacks are not. The low-key style of States "would be considered to have a racist society" and haspeople who are terminally ill whether or not they showresolving conflict is also "Anglo." As one critic of sensitivity personally held sensitivity seminars for her faculty members and staff.symptoms. Rather than put the stress on teaching grouptraining has said, "It is no exaggeration to say that there has not Last April, for instance, Ashley led a "Cultural Diversity Workshop"tolerance and cooperation, the emphasis seems to be onbeen another movement since the heyday of social Darwinism which librarian William Daniels described as "four hours of insultingharrowing up the individual soul.that has been so eager to link certain intellectual habits with speech and crude attempts at psychological manipulation." TheHarvard government professor Harvey Mansfield believesthat universities are "treating entire classes of studentsmulticulturalism and mocking its critics. The captive audience wascertain races unless it is National Socialism."day started with the distribution of an essay cheeringCambridge-based Visions Inc., founded in 1984, has then forced to watch a video, after which some minority womenunloaded their grievances. It was obvious to

PAGE 5BRUTALITYDaniels that this was a "patently tyrannical set-up" andwhen he refused to participate, Ashley threatened that"the rules would be changed" to force people like him togo along and said that those who didn't like the direction inwhich UC was moving should consider leaving.Not known as an academic powerhouse, UC boasts itsown version of the three Rs which are found in thepamphlet "Racism: How to Recognize, Respond, Report."The ubiqui-tous Mary Ellen Ashley is head of the"Racial Incidents Team" and she believes that the goodstudent is not the informed student but the student whoinforms on others. "Without information mat can beevaluated and acted upon," says the UC tract on racism,"the University cannot take the necessary steps to resolveracial incidents and eradicate racism. Reportinginformation about possible racism is an individualresponsibility, whether you are an observer or a victim."UC has installed a series of blue phones around campusto make informing on racial though crimes easier.To keep their jobs as dorm counselors, UC graduatestudents must undergo sensitivity training. In one session,dormitory workers were taken to an off-campus retreat,split into groups, issued tinker-toys and told to build atall and stable structure. In a trial run, an engineeringstudent built an impressive model. But in the next session,he was required to work under instruction from blacks andwomen who gave directions on a color-based approach.The student com-plained that the color scheme didn'tmake sense and that putting the heavy pieces at the toprather than the bottom defied the laws of physics andarchitecture. Predictably, he was criticized for his lack ofsensitivity.The University of Cincinnati may be one of the mostegregious offenders in sensitivity training, but it isby no means the only campus where such abusetakes place. At nearby Ohio State, for instance, DougWard's "No rights for Sodomites" poster drew nocomplaints from fellow students, not even the gays acrossthe hall, but two "resident advisors" in the dorm objectedand told him to take it down. When Ward refused theywrote him up for violating anti-hazing rules which prohibit"infliction of bodily or emotional harm." They alsocharged that he had violated "community standards."When Ward asked about his First Amendment rights, hewas told, "Here at Ohio State, we recognize theConstitution but we have a higher standard."Fearing that he would be sentenced to receive sensitivitytraining or expelled, Ward showed up at his hearingwith a lawyer and a member of the Ohio legislature. Theschool dropped the charges but Ward says the p.c. climate oncampus is getting worse and cites the case of two studentswho sold what were interpreted as anti-gay t-shirts andwere required to attend sensitivity sessions as theirpunishment. The offend-ers won't talk about the incidentbecause the school has demanded silence as part of theirsentence.The sensitivity phenomenon has hit the prestigiousprivate schools as well as the state universities. At Harvard,minority affairs dean Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle chooses"race-relations tutors" to "monitor the racial atmosphere,raise consciousness, and report violations of community."There are also sexual harassment monitors in each residence.The belief in sensitivity training on the part of people likeHernandez is so dogmatic that they are unable torecognize the harm it can do. When Visions Inc. wasinvited onto campus to conduct a sensitivity workshopafter the Los Angeles riots, a black student invited to spill hisfeelings said that the rioters should have been burningwhite neighbor-hoods instead of black ones. When a whitestudent suggested that this might be a racist statement anargument ensued that left the participants, previouslywithout hostility to each other, feeling bitter.At last year's Halloween party at Harvard's medicalschool, a white student and his girlfriend came dressed asClarence Thomas and Anita Hill. A black student told thecouple that the costume was offensive and demanded thatthey leave. They refused. The black student subsequentlyattacked the Clarence Thomas impersonator and was put onprobation. The white student was also disciplined, the punishmentincluding mandatory sensitivity instruction.There was no official protest when Harvard's blackstudent association sponsored a lecture by racist rapper SisterSouljah ironically entitled "The Re-education of the Negro."But administrators L. Fred Jewett and Archie Epps, alongwith Dean Hernandez-Gravelle, took issue with the use of"Negro" in another context by D. Michael Jones, editor ofFidelity magazine. Jones and Gloria Hardy, a black socialworker, had been invited on campus by the editors of ThePeninsula to discuss stereotypes of black sexual prowess andthe fate of the Moynihan Report on the breakdown of theblack family. Before the lecture took place, dean Eppscautioned them against using the term "Negro." When Jonespersisted in using it, Epps disrupted his lecture and fellowdean Jewett accused the sponsors of insensitivity in twoletters containing a bill of particulars against them, effectivelyhijacking the proceedings. Epps also objected to theterm "Spade" on a poster, although it turned out to be aquotation from Jack Kerouac."Social Issues at Dartmouth," is one of the few mandatoryevents for freshmen, who are required to sit through anumber of agit-prop skits on homosexuality, sexism andother sensitive subjects. Then they are required to engage ina two hour discussion with academic advisers who havethemselves graduated from sensitivity courses. Lookingback on this experience, Kenneth Weissman, current editorof the Dartmouth Review says: "They hit you really hard thefirst couple of months. Either you fall into line or you are anoutcast. If you say the wrong thing you are ostracized."The same pattern prevails at Duke, where the sensitivityestablishment has seized control of what was formerly anenjoyable orientation week. "Duke Visions," as the week iscalled, includes lectures about the virtues of multiculturalism,followed by discussions led by p.c. faculty members. Blacknovelist and "lifetime professor" Maya Angelou shows upeach year to deliver a keynote, and there are also "diversityawareness programs" for students, faculty and staff.Sensitivity, of course, involves sexuality as well asrace and culture. Thus Wesleyan College has beenrunning gay sensitivity workshops since 1985 which arebased on "self-criticism" and encourage participants to"imagine as many different aspects of being gay or lesbian aspossible." Facilitators are instructed to tell the "out" lesbiansand gays "not to speak too much" because "when gay peopletalk a lot about being gay, straight people don't have to thinkfor themselves so much; the hard part gets done for them."The "Dorm Outreach Program" of the Lesbian and GayStudent Alliance at Brown University began in 1984. "We tryto deconstruct the (sometimes physical) distinction between"us' and "them' by sitting amongst the students," says aninstructional pamphlet. As for abuse like that practicedagainst the blonde woman at the University of Cincinnati, theBrown sensitivity experts feel that it is a technique of lastresort, although trainers must be prepared to employ it if theyfind someone particularly resistant: "We do not want to argueor cut down any student here unless a facilitator feels this isabsolutely necessary — that the temper of the group will beruined by that one individual if she or he is not corrected ordirectly addressed when her/his facts are plainly wrong."At Cornell, gay sensitivity groups hold "Zaps" fordorms, classes, organizations and fraternities. The sameapproach has been tried at Ithaca College, Wells College,SUNY Courtland, Almira College and various communitycolleges. The sensitive zappers often find it difficult to getstraight people to try the "Exercises on Homophobia," however.As the Cornell literature says, "There are usually a fewwomen who say they've held hands or danced with anotherwoman and had no problems—but just tell them to try Frenchkissing another woman in public." Quel domagelAt Rutgers, sensitivity trainers use a booklet entitled ALittle Respect as a basis for discussion. The material wasadapted from Lesbians: A Consciousness Raising Kit, put outby the Boston NOW Lesbian Task Force. 'Tell participantsthat they must hold hands for the next 15 minutes," say theinstructions. "They may stay in the room, but they areencouraged to leave the room, floor, or building. They mustcontinue holding hands. They may not tell anyone they aredoing this for a class."When San Diego State University proposed a fashionshow it provoked a storm of protest from the sensitivityestablishment. There were threats from administrators tocancel the affair on the grounds that it discriminated againsteverybody "other than the sizes the clothing companieswant." It was an open and shut case of "sizism," according toone campus official who went on to charge that this was oneof the spokes in the "Oppression Wheel," a collection of"isms" that sensitivity trainers use in their work..Some of these draconian elements of sensitivity trainingare beginning to make their way into the world ofbusiness, which was previously immune to them. DoraBrooks reports that the prominent western law firm forwhich she works put all its lawyers and paralegals through afive-hour sensitivity course. They were told that such trainingwould help them avoid claims against their firm, butmuch of the information they received was of dubious value.In one part of the course, for instance, two of thetrainers, both minority females, flashed the term "raspberry"on the screen during a slide presentation. "We were told,"Brooks says, "that the term is a slang reference to a male orfemale prostitute who has sex with a member of the samegender to get drugs, and that we should avoid using it. It wasstrange because none of us had even ever heard of the word."Access to these tidbits of sexual arcana cost the companynearly $100,000 in fees and lost work time.Lea Militello, a lesbian police officer in San Francisco,teaches an 8-hour "sensitivity training" class, which starts byasking rookies to shout aloud every derogatory term for gaysthey've ever heard. Everyone is then required to complete anumber of written statements such as "If someone of the samesex made a pass at me, I'd.." Mandatory viewing includes thedocumentary film, "The Life and Times of Harvey Milk."In San Diego, all officers must attend a two-hourcourse called "Gay 101."The program, which began in 1986,is taught by Scott Fulkerson, executive director of the localLesbian and Gay center, which recruits are required to visit.One of the participants is Conine Mackey, a black lesbianwho claims to be a freelance writer, and who blasts thoseofficers who fail to show the requisite levels of enthusiasm.The class is an "exchange of bigotry" she says, using a phrasethat admits the aggressive impulse at the heart of the sensitivityenterprise.One California professor who confesses to beingashamed at asking to remain anonymous says,"Jean Cocteau remarked that the trouble with themodern world was that stupidity had begun to think. If youwant to transform one-time bastions of free inquiry andcosmopolitanism into conformist, third-rate institutions basedon racialist standards, the best way to accomplish your goalis to disguise your radical agenda with some pseudo-scientific,cultist approach like sensitivity training."To be sure, the methodology is more Huxleyan thanOrwellian, a form of indirect rule by psychologists andsociologists who are less interested in encouraging people toexchange ideas than in "curing" them. The proper way toproceed, they believe, is to assume guilt and then work toferret out the secret offense, leaving the offender feelingcleansed as well as corrected. In this, they resemble LaventriBeria, head of the KGB under Stalin, whose one bon mot was:"You bring me the man, I'll find the crime."Indeed, the connection between sensitivity trainingand political propaganda and reeducation is an intriguing one.One female academic who recently got hold of a manual ofthe Polish underground which taught dissidents how to dealwith the secret police when arrested has been handing it outto students to equip them to deal with the sensitivity inquisition.It is no accident that those most critical of the sensitivitytraining movement spreading through the university are theformer victims of Marxism-Leninism. Last fall, Polish tutorsat Harvard confounded sensitivity trainers, at least for amoment or two, when they took one look at their materials,techniques and objectives and then said, "This is just what weleft Communism to get away from."K. L. Billingsley

PAGE 6THE PC ACADEMY:by John J. Millerwork chants of slaves and should thus be banned.The student government spent thousands of dollarsIto send left-wing activists on "fact-finding missions"to El Salvador and the West Bank. MyI'D NEVER HEARD OF POLITICALcorrectness before I came to the dormitory contained an "Angela Davis Lounge,"University of Michigan. But by the featuring an enormous mural of the Communisttime I graduated last May, I was tired of the hack herself. The administration distributed newphrase, and even more weary of the thing it speech policies which appeared to forbid the mostdescribes, although well educated by learning fundamental rights of expression. (The policy wasto resist it.later ruled unconstitutional). These events, andWhen I first arrived on campus in September,others like them, helped me to define myselfpolitically.1988, I wasn't a terribly political person. To thedegree that politics always interested me, it was inDespite its prevalence, such lunacy did notprofoundly affect my classroom experience untila non-ideological way. I wasn't even sure who I'dthe first term of my sophomore year. I'd made thevote for when my first chance came in November.During the spring, the Democrats had momentarilymistake of enrolling in a certain section of anIntroduction to Psychology course. I'd previouslygained my shallow support, partly because I wentshared several classrooms with Marxists, feminists,and vegetarians, but their biases didn't ap-through a flirtation with socialism, partly becausetheir primary and caucus fights were more interesting.By summer's end, however, my loyalties hadpear to get in the way of their primary tasks. Myexperiences with them were in varying degreeswaned. With encouragement from my parents(proud Goldwater Republicans) and my immigrantinstructive, or at least amusing.After several weeks of beginners' Pavlov,Cuban boss, combined with — I'm a little embarrassedto admit this now—George Bush's remark-however, my psych class dove into that murkiest ofable acceptance speech at the GOP convention, Itopics, a dubious field which masquerades assomething entirely more important than what itheaded off to school as a lukewarm Republican.actually is: social psychology. In a class sessionMy first week in Ann Arbor provided morepolitical education than my previous 18 years. Eagerto join a student newspaper, I devoured copiesdevoted to racism, my professor began by sayingthat lynching a person simply because he is blackis racism. We all took notes and agreed.of the Michigan Review (generally conservative)and the Michigan Daily (generally liberal) in anShe then went on to outline different varietiesof racism, as if there were many definitions, subdefinitions,and qualifications necessarily attachedeffort to find a suitable home. The first monthlyissue of the Review focused on topics likemulticulturalism and the Western tradition. Theto this single phenomenon, which of course, in hermind, there was. Foremost was institutional racism— the concept that only those races wieldingfirst five or six issues of the Daily were consumedby a raging debate about sanitary napkins.Every September, the student governmentpower in a society can be guilty of racism (i.e. thosewho control the institutions, such as white peopleplaces kits of trial-size products in dorm rooms toin, say, the United States). Members of all racesraise some money. Nobody seems to mind, sincecontents are handy: small tubes of toothpaste, acan hold sentiments of baseless rage, but for agenuine act of racism to occur, one must be institutionallyprivileged. This is political correctnesslittle extra deodorant, some spare Tylenol, etc.Nobody cared, that is, except for a handful ofradical feminists. The kits were distributed by gender:one for boys, one for girls. In the female edition,of the mundane kind, and I'd heard it many timesbefore my psychology professor explained it. Thep.c. wake-up call sounded, however, when shestudents found sanitary napkins. Despite the factthat some people, well, use such things, the feministsranted, carped, and a few maybe even swooned.went further to describe something called "symbolicracism."Symbolic racism, put plainly, is what happenswhen one criticizes government programsDoesn't the inclusion of such products, after all,suggest that women are somehow... unclean? Andwhich are intended to help disadvantaged minorities.Arguing that the Great Society may have doneisn't this implication sexism?This was the big news on campus during myfirst week. The Daily writers, gravely concernedmore to impede the interests of black America thananything else since the Second World War, forover the important matters raised by the anti-sanitarynapkin feminists, allowed the debate to domi-instance, would be an act of racism, symbolicnate their news stories and editorials. Issues likevariety. I remember sitting in the rear of the classroomand gazing at my professor in disbelief overtuition increases, lousy orientation programs, andwhat I'd just heard. I wondered, "Is this for real?"student football ticket policies received little attention.I joined the Review and made a turn to theUnfortunately, I chose not to challenge theprofessor. I knew she was wrong and that I couldpolitical right.make a convincing argument which would persuadesome of the students whom she no doubt hadOther events and aspects of university lifecommitted me further to that direction. Three protestersinterrupted my freshman convocation cer-just duped. Yet I based my decision not to reactupon a slavish devotion to the pursuit of a respectablegrade point average. I kept my mouth shut.emony and declared that a performing choir, whichincluded one black man, had "appropriated" theIavoided a confrontation which might make m

PAGE 7SURVIVOR'S MEMOIR1. Nelson Algren gave this famousadvice for leading a successful life:"Never eat at a place called Mom's;never play cards with a man namedDoc; and never go to bed with someonewho has more problems than you do."Adapt this to your academic experience:Never take a class from someonewho claims Virginia Woolf is a betterwriter than William Shakespeare; neverbefriend someone who begins or endsevery other sentence with the mantra"racismsexismhomophobia"; andnever goto bed with someone who saysthat AIDS is an equal opportunity dis-2. At registration time, read yourcourse catalogues very carefully. Politically correct professors will not usuallylabel themselves as such. But they willbe unable to help using code words intheir coursedescriptions. Avoid classesthat are described through thebuzzwords of correctitude: patriarchy,false consciousness, hegemony, imperialism, Foucault, solidarity, Euro-,andro- and other centrisms, NativeAmerican, hierarchy, socialist ideal,Catharine MacKinnon, semiotics, "aftertwelve years of Reagan and Bush," gender issues, actually existing Marxism,heteronormativity, phallo-anything.3. Men with handbags are usuallymaking a political statement. Womenwith hairy armpits are always making apolitical statementTIPS FOR SURVIVAL4.There is no point in being politicallycorrect if you don't let people know it, so mostinstructors leave non-verbal clues. Dressingin proletarian chic is one (Ben Davis shirts,Jordache Jeans, workboots, anything fromLL Bean). The granola look is another—nomake-up, uncombed hair, earth-colors andhoop earrings. (A nose ring typically expresses one-ness with the world'smulticulturally oppressed.) A third is theephemera posted on the bulletin boards outside instructors' offices. Look for cartoonsfrom the Village Voice, anti-apartheid bumperstickers and a conference announcementfeaturing eco-feminism, animal rights alertsand post-modern anything.5.Ask your instructor his or her positionon gender-neutral language. When you receive the usual boilerplate answer, ask him/her if this means he/she likes this reworkingof the sentence "All men are brothers": Allpeople are siblings.6.Avoid any Philosophy class whichproposes to separate Marx in theory fromMarx in practice. Avoid any history classwhich proposes that the U.S. drove Castrointo the arms of the Soviet Union. (Castro wasthe arms of the Soviet Union.)7.Take a lot of science and mathcourses.Scientists have a stake in truth and objectivity and will be the last holdouts against political correctness. Scientists may not be asarticulate as their liberal arts colleagues, butthey know that English professors, for instance, are cynical about values becausethey suspect that their discipline has none.Kirk, Nock, and other first-rate thinkers notfa-vored by the contemporary academy. Once Ibe-came confident with my own views, I becamemore confident about fighting back. I never let themon-strously absurd slip by without comment.I aired my thoughts sometimes in discussion,more often in papers, and alwaysaccompanied by a coolheadednessthat usually won respect rather thanresentment.The techniques I acquired worked for me. Theywon't work for everyone. It is a miserable situationwhen someone must conceive a strategy for gettingthrough an experience that ought to be filled with thewonder of discovery. But the identity of oppositionistoffers an opportunity for a distinctive kind ofeducation. You may not study the Western traditionin college any more, but you can study the artsof survival and subversion.8. Be the devil's advocate. When aleftwing professor preaches about environmentalism,ask him/her how he/she can justify the impact on the working class of increased environmentalregulation. When the professor preachesabout jobs and employment security,ask him/her how he/she can justify theimpact on the environment of intensifiedeconomic activity.9. Be an informer. Don't hesitate togo to the administration whenever yousee any signs of political bias in gradingor classroom discussion. (Be sure theadministrator is not politically correct.)If going to the administration doesn'twork, go to the local press. If that doesn'twork, go to your state assemblyperson.If that doesn't work, go to yourCongressperson or U.S. Senator. If thatdoesn't work, go to your parents' lawyer.10. Be a pain in the ass. Whenevera classroom discussion is moving onwith no opposition to the lunacy athand,raise your hand and ask a question thatwill stop everyone in his/her tracks. Like:If women are only paid 60 cents on thedollar compared to men, how comeemployers don't fire their male employees,hire women and increase their profits by 40%? In doing this, don't commitacademic suicide. Assume a certain obliqueness.Your model should not beMario Savio, but rather George of TheJerry Seinfeld Show.

PAGE 8WHATEVER IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN INthe larger scheme of things, the university hadby the third week of class acquired a novelincarnation for me as Old Hose, the hose emerging in partfrom the Spanish Jose, as in Hey Jose, you see them knockers,man? and in part from the general down-at-the-heels way theplace held itself together, the buildings resisting somehowthe temptation to sag, the fountain in the center of the campus,its water turned off, staring upward like an indolent eye. I hadarrived three years earlier; I left three years later, the darkcloud of my own discomfort a lunatic contrast to the southernsunshine that seemed to spill over the place, lighting up eventhe restrooms with a lurid Latin light. I thought I might writeabout things; I made a few false starts, the usual literarydivagations— mais, je divage — symptoms, I nowrealize, of a subject that insolently refused to be sustained as anobject of thought; the place — Old Hose, I mean — existedin a realm beyond the powers of parody.I had a faculty ID card with my picture, and a woodenpigeonhole for letters in the department office; I had keys tothe room in which coffee was kept percolating, the stuff inkyby the end of the day; I had been introduced to my colleagues.The men were in their late middle age, with spider-webbednoses, stooped shoulders, concave cheeks. The women wereatrociously ugly. Many were lesbians. Their hair was cutshort and frosted orange. They used no make up and woreleather jackers with silver zippers. Some had tattoos. Theyrefused to shake hands with me. Or any other man. I had beenhired to teach critical thinking by the chairman of the department.She sat opposite me now; we had met in the library. Shewas short and enormously stout and talked in a hissed breathywhisper, rings of yellow fat, I imagined, closing about hertrachea. She was a cousin hidden away in a dark cellar, acomical cognate, to those Ubangi women who stretch theirshapely necks by means of a series of concentric teak andivory rings. She suggested that I call her Doctor Lulu. Iendeavored to look earnest and intent. Eh, what's up Doc? Ihad taught logic before, of course. If all men love somewomen do some women love all men? Yo Waldburger. Asudden start, like a pigeon fluttering: Waldburger composinghimself: Waldburger composed: I dunno man. Not in prospect,such exercises, Dr. Lulu assured me. This is a course incritical thinking, she said, not logic. Here look. She pawedover some papers on her desk and after shuffling things upconsiderably passed a yellow-covered, stapled sheaf of notesto me. "This is our interactive cultural module.' I turned to thefirst page. There were diacritical marks above each word. Thething was written in Vietnamese. I looked up. Dr. Lulushrugged her massive shoulders. She waved a pudgy hand asif to insist that her stoutness placed her above detail. I likedher. Teach whatever you want, she seemed to say.My office was in a new faculty designed building,Alice Walker Hall; it had been the only structure on campusto suffer significant damage from the Loma Prieta earthquake,whole slabs of extravagant marble crashing to thewalkway with a dusty roar, windows shattering, foundationscracking, cracked, the Dean, as our Irishman, nodding on thetelephone in his office a week later as the damage wasexplained to him in lugubrious financial detail, saying I knewthose farts had their heads up their ass. I shared quarters witha poet, a linguist, and the department's new professor ofcreative writing, a full-blooded Cherokee, a fabulous ethnicacquisition. The affirmative action equivalent to 4 blacks and32 women. Tonto I saw rarely and when I did he wasgenerally drunk, weaving into the office late in the afternoonand furiously demanding to know where he had deposited hiskeys or his pen or a paper left by some adoring student. Laterin the year it was discovered that the books he had publishedhe had not written. No one thought the less of him. The poet,Winfred Blatski, was on the telephone a good deal. Thereceiver grew out of his ear like an extravagant organ. He wasforever conducting urgent, whispered conversations in whichlarge sums of money figured; poetry was evidently a moreforthcoming financial enterprise than I had been given tounderstand. When Blatsky was not on the telephone, he waseverywhere else in the little office, hanging his tweed jacketon the room's only hanger, disgusting damp stains under-A fiction by David Berlinskineath the arm holes, standing with one hip braced against hischair arm, or sitting in pudgy perplexity at his desk, scribblingout expense reports, or standing on his toes to fetch abook from the top shelf of the bookcase, and, of course,causing an entire row of books to topple over. It was Blatski'sresponsibility to bring a number of younger poets to thecampus as a part of a forum funded by a retired Santa Cruzplumbing contractor named Leonard Glauber. Blatski wouldwalk differently to the center of the stage and at the podiumhawk to the back of his closed first and announce that Ms.Antipode uh here is going to read uh from her new, her new— a pause to consult the coffee smeared notes that he wasclutching — sonestina Learning to Love my Lover's Lips.There would be a dry rustle of applause, a few coughs. Ms.Antipode would herself cough once or twice, adjust themicrophone ceremonially, tapping the bulb with her fingertip, and then announce defiantly that her poem was dedicatedto her lover: I cannot lick my lips my lover's like, she bendsher head, her knees trembling as my arched tongue travelsbackward across her thighs.... In the audience were membersof the English department, now nodding absently,Wiggsy Riddlepest, prepared to lend an ear (or anything else)to her Sapphic sisters, a few undergraduates, and LeonardGlauber, wearing a red blazer over a Glauber Works tee shirt,his hands folded serenely across his ample belly.George Nercessian, the room's other occupant, wasconspicuous chiefly by his absence; he affected the officelike an ectoplasm, leaving behind only tantalizing traces ofhimself— a copy of Chomsky's Managua lectures, a handbookon Burmese phonology, a guide to the grammar ofPolish. An orange cut neatly into sections and left on the desklike a dwarfed Aztec suppliant. When one day I opened thedoor, I was surprised to see the phantom sitting in his chair,leaning forward, a young woman in front of him, his hand onher knee."Yes?" he asked with perfect composure, as if I wassomehow an interloper in my own office."I'm David Berlinski.""The Mysterious Other," said this Nercessian withmaddening insouciance, suggesting somehow that it was Iwho had been absent from the office for so many weeks whilehe himself had been implacably at work.We would hold office hours between eleven and twelve.At noon, we would rise, the two of us, walk past the Bloodsin the hall, exiles from the now closed Afro-AmericanCenter, which had been housed on the earthquake devastatedI SHARED QUARTERSWITH A POET, A LINGUIST,AND THE DEPARTMENT'SNEW PROFESSOR OF CRE-ATIVE WRITING, A FULL-BLOODED CHEROKEE, AFABULOUS ETHNIC AC-QUISITION. THE AFFIRMA-TIVE ACTION EQUIVALENTTO 4 BLACKS AND 32WOMEN.fifth floor, and exit into the warm sunlight. Leaving AliceWalker Hall was always like passing from darkness into light"Yes," said George Nercessian gravely, when I remarkedon the beauty of the day. A number of booths and tables hadbeen set up on the walkway that bisected the campus. Atone, a group of morose Koreans was tending a charcoalbrazier endeavoring by means of a palm frond, whichtheir leader waved solemnly, to stir the coals into glowinglife. Another table was given over to Moslem literature. Itsproprietor looked very much like Malcom X and stood in thesun talking intently to the open air, his index fingerstabbing at the sparkles. "De white man," he was saying,"has not told you de truf. No, no, no he has not. Dat debil, hehas not told you de truf."Dat Debil.As we sauntered along, George nodded discretelytoward a number of undergraduates: A large-breasted girlwith long dirty blonde hair, a slim-hipped young brunette inboots and jeans carrying a backpack in a loping stride. Heindicated the objects of his attention by means of a delicatenod of his head, a tilt, a curiously civilized gesture. Thesewere students with whom he had conducted affairs. "I'm herefor the pussy," he said. He preferred very young womenand regarded a position as a high-school track coach as adistant, dreamy, utterly unobtainable ideal. His chargescarried no grudges. "How do you do it?"I asked. We hadreached the end of the walkway and were about to leave thecampus. George fluttered his fingers in the air as a sign of hisdelicacy. "It's all very simple.""I don't understand.""Of course. You couldn't even bag a Filipino."I liked them, my students. They gave off heat, but notlight. One muscular young man, with untroubled eyes and aclear complexion, was painfully nervous about speakingaloud, his smooth face mottling with blood whenever I calledon him. By and by, he relaxed. He was a member of theCalifornia Highway Patrol. He told us stories of the road, alldelivered in that rich police vocabulary, full of perps andpeds and accounts of how one day chasing a perp at speedsin excess of one hundred miles an hour easy this ped hejust walked in front of the vehicle and it wasn't even a bam,you know, more like a splat and yeah, you get used to it;when I asked him why he had not volunteered for themotorcycle patrol, given his love of speed and danger, hereplied sol-emnly that my Mom she won't let me, she'djust freak out There were California lower-class natives inmy class, mon-strous boys with ripe pustules and bleachedblonde hair, an earing in one ear, or young women with thicklegs and a kind of low-slung Edsel-like pelvis, or thestatistically inevitable one-in-a-thousand raven-hairedbeauty, eyes glowing, lips cheery cherry red, as tart as tartcould be. They lived at home, these teenagers, with theirparents, rootless themselves, those parents, a grandmotheryet living in Idaho, in a house by a field where the windblows off the plains, the screen door banging fitfully,someone calling Rachel over and over again. They ateCheese Whiz, Big Macs, Doritos, mayonnaise on whitebread, Velveeta, Macaroni and Cheese, fudge pies; theyaspired to police work or accounting or business managementor / dunno get a job, something, I guess; they worked parttime, and took care of their baby brother, their mothers notentirely diligent about birth control, leaving the diaphragm inthe medicine chest and prone thus to pregnancies in theirforties; they did not read and could not write and they weretouching and earnest and good-natured, curiously old-fashioned,devoted to those mothers of theirs, whom they referredto as mom — / think my mom she's so neat.In the fall, I taught critical thinking, in the spring, thecalculus and differential equations. The department of mathematicswas home to a number of satisfied incompetents, menwho taught their lovely, limpid subject by drilling studentsover and over again in a few problem sets, and who regardedtheir own monstrous ignorance no more than a majesticwhim. There was even a distracted lunatic somewhere whospent his time writing science fiction novels in which strangelyvoluptuous women would find themselves chained to thethirteenth dimension in their underwear. A few Russianimmigrants had come to Old Hose by means of fantastic

PAGE 9journeys, inconceivably difficult stratagems. Igor Pninofskywas no more than five feet tall; he had an unhealthy look,evoked as much by a life of fear as by a bad diet; he spokeEnglish with an ineradicable, almost opaque Russian accent,and regarded his colleagues and students, now that he hadmiraculously been awarded tenure, with barely disguisedcontempt. His courses were of fearful difficulty. "Iss nofink,"he would say when it was observed that he had failed almostall of the students reckless enough to study the calculus withhim. "In Moscou, chall fail." The Chairman of the department,Virgil Smith, a plump perfectly bald computer scientist,endeavored to interpose himself between the implacablePninofsky and his enraged students. "Now look, Igor," hewould whine placatingly, "you have to remember that thisisn't MIT.""Iss not possible forget," Pninofsky would rumble.And there matters would remain so that in the endPninofsky had no students whatsoever and remained free todevote himself entirely to his research in partial differentialequations. He had lost eight years altogether. When he hadapplied for permission to emigrate, Russian authorities hadstripped him promptly of his position at the University ofMoscow; he simply sat at home in his tiny apartment. "Nobooks," he said, "no paper. Nofink." Four years had beenswallowed up learning his own brand of barely serviceableEnglish. Now that he had put teaching behind him, heworked furiously to catch up. "Vary difficult," he said. "Somuch cheppens." We tried often to talk mathematics, but heremained utterly uninterested in differential topology andvaguely contemptuous of anything that did not involve hardanalysis.Most of my students were Asian. I had learned a fewwords of Vietnamese from an old French grammar book,Lecons Vietnamienne, intended no doubt for black foreignlegion troops stationed in southeast Asia. Cow An, I said oneday, with a grotesquely incorrect accent; this provoked afurious burst of tittering from the gaggle of short waistedgirls who with perfect impunity began to whisper to oneanother behind their closed, tight, little hands; but afterward,one of the boys in my class, a serious, smooth-skinnedVietnamese named Nyugen, came up to me and said ChowAn correctly; and when afterward I had asked this Nyugen afew polite questions about his background—where are youfrom? what have you done? — I heard in response only aconfused, barely articulated story: The open ocean, the southChina seas, the starring sky, Mother, brother, chop, chop.Sometime in the spring, Jarred Blockheber died in hishouse in the Berkeley hills; I had seen him shuffling down thecorridors of Alice Walker Hall dressed in a chartreuse shirtand an absurd plaid jacket, a colostomy bag tucked discretelybehind the waistband of his pleated slacks; he would advancethe corridors with a series of fierce snorts, more or lessdragging his stroke-crippled leg behind him, and my naturalsense of sympathy for his shambling was offset entirely bymy anxiety that he would fix me with his one good eye, theother, being glass, having a tendency to wander irresolutely,lay one of those veiny hands on my shoulder and with a moistexhalation of foul denture breath ask solemnly how I wasdoing. Virgil Smith asked me to prepare the notice. Ofcourse. I could think of nothing to say. Blockheber had donenothing, influenced no one. He rarely published and what hehad published was either incorrect or trivial. He had nohobbies, no passions. I asked Michael Twipt for advice.Twipt was a logician who had conceived the thesis thatsixteen truth values (true, almost true, almost almost true,and so finally to finally finally false) were required to explainordinary inference. He had spent years on his research andproduced finally a paper setting out his main result. A journalin New Zealand had accepted it for publication. He was veryproud. "What do you think, Mike," I asked. "AboutBlockheber, I mean." It was dangerous to afford Twipt aconversational opening. He was like the Ancient Mariner.Twipt folded his forehead upward in concentration. He hada small face and a large mustache. A minute went by. "Hewas always on time," he finally said."Colleagues will remember with a sense of real loss,"I wrote, Jarred Blockheber's sense — his outstanding sense— of punctuality."In late spring, I attended a conference sponsored byPepsi-Cola; it was devoted to the university in a multiculturalcontext. The San Jose Hilton had been given over to theproceedings; a gay sign on the marquee carried the legendWelcome Multiculturalists in red block letters. A table hadbeen set up in the Gold room with literature by a number ofthird world authors, one in particular, T'shumba A'laka,having actually materialized from a pile of red books, all ofthem copies of his own work, an enterprise in which heGEORGE MCGEORGE,THE UNIVERSITYS AFFIR-MATIVE ACTION OFFICER,WAS WELL-KNOWN ONCAMPUS FOR HAVINGPHYSICALLY ATTACKEDA COPY OF ALAN BLOOM'STHE CLOSING OF THEAMERICAN MIND AT ACONFERENCE ON LIT-ERACY HELD SOME WEEKSBEFORE.demonstrated that whatever was of value in the westerntradition (the spoon, tribal masks, flint) was of African origin.An open luncheon preceded the afternoon session. Thesalad bar at the hospitality lounge was the bleak shrine towardwhich the sad great tubby women attending the conferencewould migrate like lumbering caribou and before which theystood in waddling indecision, heaping their plates finally withradishes, lettuce, garbanzo beans, cucumbers, sprouts, baconbits and Green Goddess dressing, the whole awful concoctionto be eaten slowly, thoughtfully.The afternoon session of the conference met around anelliptical table. Joseph Loman sat at the head, in thechairperson's seat. He was a philosopher of literary taciturnity,his conversation a series of subdued grunts. He was talland thin and ran fifteen miles every day. His contribution tophilosophy was an unfinished paper in which he argued thattime moves in four dimensions. He welcomed us to theproceedings by saying "uh welcome" in a low voice, his palmsupturned. The President of the university, a woman of preternaturalstupidity, had taped an address. After some fumbling,Loman managed to get the tape recorder to work. "There is amine field that lies between freedom of expression — amongour most precious civil liberties—and freedom from racial orsexual harassment—among our most basic civil rights," saidthe President.Afterward, Priscilla Fishbein was the first to speak. Shewas a professor of Leisure Studies. She sat primly at her spot,knees clenched."You know, something has always like bothered me.I'm Anglo and I'm really into getting in touch with my Angloand Celtic roots. I'm interested in growing spiritually, becominga more spiritual person."George McGeorge, the university's affirmative actionofficer, had discovered an ingrown hair below his chin andwas endeavoring to stretch his neck in order to extirpate theoffender; he was well-known on campus for having physicallyattacked a copy of Alan Bloom's The Closing of theAmerican Mind at a conference on literacy held some weeksbefore. He had ripped the pages of the book from its spine andthrew them on the floor; afterward, he stamped angrily on thedebris. I remember that he had little feet.Priscilla Fishbein recommenced her drone: "And anyway,"she said,"it's not my fault that I was birthed here. I meanI didn't have any say over where my parents decided to birthme and anyhow I do feel a spiritual community with thiscountry, and the trees and all, even though it is very imperialistic...""Hegemonistic," murmured Wiggsy Riddlepest, whohad been listening attentively."Hemogistic and all and what I really am asking is I feelso attracted to certain native American traditions, I want toknow whether like its all right for me even though I'm Angloto use those traditions in my own spiritual quest. I mean somany times you people seem to feel that it's wrong to do that.I just want to know how you feel about that?"Ann Two Tree nodded. She had been born AnnabelDamplowitz, her association with the Nez Perce a familyrumor that her great grandmother had been raped by a savageon the journey from St. Louis to San Francisco in thelate 1870s. A tendency to blush violently had reintroducedher to her ethnic roots."Uh yes," she said, "you know I'd like to critique yourremark about you people. I thought that showed insensitivity."Rita Oxenblot nodded vigorously, shaking her jowlslike a poodle. She was married to a Negro, a politicallysuccessful union of which she was inordinately proud, herpleasure marred only by the fact that her husband beat herwith gong-like regularly. In other respects, her organs ofindignation were unusually well developed.Priscilla Fishbein shrank in her chair and mouthed theword sorry."But I think," Ann Two Tree continued, "that, youknow, what's really important is respect, respect for otherpeople's traditions and way of life. Even though I'm NezPerce on my mother's side, I wouldn't like do a Nez Percechant unless, you know, it was all right, I was asked to do thechant, or I felt I had permission from the tribal elders to dothe chant, you know what I mean? Otherwise I would feel Iwas not demonstrating the respect I should."I tried to imagine Ann Two Tree doing a Nez Percechant. Perhaps by the salad bar in the hospitality lounge."But I feel so attracted to Native American spirituality,"Priscilla whined."Well, that's part of reality, isn't it," said Ann TwoTree happily, "we're all attracted to things we can't orshouldn't have," — she gave Wiggsy a heavy, meaningfullook — "other people's possessions, or their wives, orhusbands, or lovers."George McGeorge lowered his chin and said: "Let'snot have a catfight here."Ann Two Tree and Wiggsy Riddlepest slitted theireyes and turned to look at him simultaneously."That is a derogatory sexist term," said Wiggsy."It indicates bias," Ann Two Tree added. "It's demeaningand stereotypifying.""Hey," said George McGeorge, "I'm just here todialogue with you."Frank Harebal returned the conversation to the pointat issue: "Are you saying, then," he said,” that it's alwayswrong for Native American traditions and spiritual practicesto be used by Anglos?"Harebal was a philosopher flamboyantly committedto affirmative action. Just recently he had argued in thecampus newspaper that Native Americans of the 17th Centurypossessed a legal culture superior to that of contemporaryGreat Britain. He suffered from an aggressively nauseatingbody odor whose existence he denied. "I do not eatgarlic," he said with florid indignation when Rita Oxenblot,his office mate, inquired delicately about the matter."I'm saying that its part of the respect we should havefor people of color that we just don't take their traditions,"said Ann Two Tree.A silence enveloped the room. Wiggsy Riddlepestlooked hopefully at the beeper on her webbed belt. She wasthe campus rape crisis counselor. Often her beeper summonedher at odd hours. Students and colleagues wereaccustomed to seeing her burst explosively from the lecturehall or the student cafeteria. Today the beeper was silent.Joseph Loman looked about. "Uh," he asked.Frank Harebal pushed his chair back from the tablewith a scraping sound.A few motes of dust rose in the air above the oiled andpolished conference table and spun in the sunlight thatstreamed through the windows of the room.I was dying of hatred and boredom.I never went back, except once, to recover a pair ofexpensive Reboks I had left in a filing cabinet drawer in myoffice. A woman named Stuntvesel was sitting at my desk.She looked at me with fierce glittering eyes as I rummagedfor my sneakers. I made my apologies and left. Outside, thecampus was squatting in the harsh thrilling sunlight. Thedepartment of Leisure Studies had erected a huge red bannerabove the campus walkway. It said Leisure: The Balance inLife. A picture of an enormous balance scale illustrated thelegend.Old Hose! It was beyond being beyond even.

PAGE 10TREASON continued from page 1ments turned out to be a shower.For a few weeks, the pact held. Psychology staffersengaged in bathroom politesse with employees of the Centerfor the Study of Black Literature and Culture. Amity reigned.Integration was in the air. But soon this glasnost began toevaporate when the chairman of the Psychology Departmentstarted getting letters of complaint from the Director ofthe Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture. Adog from Psychology had somehow been allowed to strayinto the bathroom. A wrapped sandwich had been placed inthe refrigerator which Baker had situated outside the bathroomat his end of the building. The chairman of thePsychology Department made apologies to the Director.But the complaints kept coming.Then, one day, members of the Psychology departmentcame to use the bathroom and found that it was locked.All efforts they made to negotiate a key were rebuffed. Indesperation, the Dean was brought in to continue the negotiations.But his efforts failed too. Soon the negotiationswere taking place between Houston Baker's lawyer and theUniversity counsel, who confided to a faculty member thatthis was not the only issue under negotiation and that, in fact,a fifth of his retainer was spent on matters pertaining toHouston Baker.It was eight months before an agreement was finallyreached that would allow the irridentists in Psychology tohave access to the bathroom on the first floor of the building.Even this new truce was swiftly broken, however, whenHouston Baker interpreted theagreement as affording access onlybetween the hours of 9 and 5, Mondaythrough Friday. What were they to do,the psychologists asked, when naturecalled after banking hours or onweekends? Baker let them know thatwas their problem. The conflictcontinued.Finally, the Administration intervened.The passageway connecting thetwo parts of the building would be sealed. Inaddition a new bathroom would be builtfor Psychology at a cost of $20,000. Thiswas exclusive of the money it cost to sealoff the two sides of the building. The newpsychology bathroom didn't have ashower, of course, but it was on the firstfloor and it was theirs. In what mightunder other circumstances be calledblack humor, the psychologists put up aplaque commemorating their struggleand naming the new space: The HoustonBaker Bathroom.Say what you will about Karl Marx, butat least he thought of therevolution as an enterprise involvingnobility and risk. Promtheusstealing fire from the gods: this wasMarx's image of the revolutionary hero.The possible punishment for failure was eternal obloquy; thepotential reward for victory was the salvation ofhumankind.For the enforcers of political correctness, people whonatter about Marx and clutter his name with post- and neoandactually existing and other prefixes, the revolution theywage is guilt-free and no-fault and about as heroic as visitingan automatic teller machine. Political correctness is not therevolutionary's sword, but the bureaucrat's diktat. It is lessabout the things it claims to be about than it is about nestfeatheringcareerism and opportunistic ambition. In one ofthose delicious ironies that waft through the groves ofacademe, actually existing capitalism is employed every dayin the academy by those who deny the claims of property andmarkets at the same time that they avidly seek titles to others'buildings and strive to privatize previously communal bathrooms.All the vulgar Marxisms emanating from the universityare right about one thing: power is the essence of thispolitical culture. PC is not about culture or knowledge. It isabout power. It is about the strivings of a new class ofacademic bureaucrats who have sought to harness the theoreticalmoral authority and real power that flows from thecategories of race/class/gender as a way of seizing perquisitesand terrain inside the ivory tower. Free speech and freeinquiry as well as the notion of objective truth are not valuesworthy of respect but merely obstacles standing in the wayof their acquisitive push. Under the reign of the commissarsof PC, concepts like diversity are kicked around likehackysacks, but the academy is now a narrower placeintellectually, morally and spiritually than it has been at anytime since it was an appendage of the church. In the last twodecades the American liberal arts university has becomemore politically correct and less intelligent, sinking to thelowest level in its 300 year history. And the blame rests withthe big enchiladas of political correctness, who must beconsidered in the same class as the televangelists whopretend to gather millions for Jesus which they use for theirown debaucheries, debasing the very currency of the doctrinesthey preach.Who are the Lenins of this revolution, the Trotskys,Mao Zedongs, and Castros? Well, Houston Baker,for whom the private bathroom is equivalent tothe sealed railway car hurtling toward the Finland Station, isone. A far more alert and therefore more wasted talent is thatof Stanley Fish, a name almost synonymous with the PCphenomenon now that he has completed his dog and ponyshow with Dinesh D'Souza.Of all the big enchiladas of political correctness, FishHouston Bakeris the most liberated from conventional expectation, the leastperturbed by appearing the fool. The legends of his posturingsproliferate. On one celebrated occasion, for instance, he wasscheduled to give a seminar at Temple University for highpowered academics only. When he arrived for the seminar hehad a fawning graduate student in train and a tape recorder todocument the occasion. Whenever he himself began to speakhe would turn on the tape recorder. When someone elsespoke, he would turn the tape recorder off if their commentsdid not pass muster — a sign, in that semiotically enrichedatmosphere, that the speaker did not exist. And wheneversomeone asked a question Fish did not believe would stretchhis intellect, he would turn them over to the graduate studentfor a response.This is what PC is all about: preening display, fatuousnarcissism, petty power games. If Fish is interesting at all, itis that he does not bother to hide his distaste for the idealismthat some of his colleagues claim as their motivation. He copsto his opportunism, acknowledging that the primary appeal ofpolitical correctnesses such as race/class/gender is that theyare above all useful to him. (As one colleague notes, "Stanleywould just as cheerfully follow the tenets of Alan Bloom if hecould get personal mileage from them.") Whatever the game,Fish acknowledges that power and money are the ways youkeep score. (He refers to a certain talk as his "Porsche lecture"because that is what its repeated delivery bought him.) Hemakes no bones about his miniaturized Nietzscheanism. "Iwant to be able to walk into any first rate faculty anywhere anddominate it, shape it to my will," goes one of his morenotorious pronouncements. "I'm fascinated by my own will."If this were not so impotent and self-parodying, it might becalled a fascist yearning.Some people got upset when it was revealed a year or soago that Fish had written a letter to the administration at Dukeregarding the formation of a campus chapter of the NationalAssociation of Scholars, in which he urged that the membersof the organization not be allowed to sit on important universitycommittees. It was, in fact, an attempt to see how far hecould get — taking a bite out of an academic Sudetenland,rather than any passionately held agenda. When he wasrebuffed he merely went on to the next thing, looking foranother place to work his pipsqueak will. This is what it is allabout.Fish's vaunted "theorizing" makes sense only in the hall ofmirrors world of the university where the institutionalimmune system has been destroyed by a series of opportunisticintellectual diseases. It is no accident that people like Fishbelieve everything is determined by language. Guess whocontrols the language in an academicsetting? He has carried his dada fromliterature to the law, arguing that the copand even the judge use the force of law in away that is indistinguishable, say, from theforce used by a mugger. ("There's always agun at your head.") Conversely the rapist isas much an exponent of "principled force"as the legislator or district attorney. Onewould like to sentence this Gucci revolutionaryto an afternoon in the tenderloin ofsome big city and videotape him expoundinghis theories to the citizens of the street as theycircle around and eat his lunch.For someone like Stanley Fish the chaoscaused in the academic world by thebulldozers of PC on which he hitch hikes isnot a moral crisis but a personalopportunity. Most of his comrades on theramparts are less candid and moreconfused about what they are doing.Gerald Graff, for instance, professor ofEnglish at the University of Chicago andfounder of the Teachers for a DemocraticCulture, appears to have convincedhimself that he is fighting back barbarians of the right who arebanging on the gates of the new Eden created by the radicalelite.If Fish is the revolutionary cynic, someone like Graffis the revolutionary surfer obsessed with catching the nextwave. At the beginning of the vogue for deconstruction andother French ticklers, he wrote about how literature makesreal assertions about the world and thus must be viewed inbiographical and social context. While to the untutored thismight seem a sensible position, to those who were beginningto determine academic futures, it was regarded as a conservativeone. And to be conservative, of course, is to be excludedfrom the new diversity. Soon Graff had become full of cheeryhomage to Derrida. The change took place with all the forceof a conversion experience just at the moment that the trulychic radicals were leaving deconstruction. "I think Gerry wasbuying at the top," says a faculty friend. "He really wasn'tthinking. He just didn't want to be lonely."Graff embodies the malaise of literature professorswho like to think they are dealing with big truths nobody elseappreciates and who are gripped by two powerful emotionsat the same time — megalomania and self contempt — achemistry creating what the French call ressentiment.

PAGE 11In time, Graff would make his peace with the neworthodoxies by floating what Camille Paglia might call junkbonds of his own. This was his notion of "teaching theconflict." When dealing with Heart of Darkness, for instance,the enlightened professor should explore the issue ofwhether or not Conrad was a racist and his work a text ofcolonialism. Of course, the "issue" is not an issue until theprofessor makes it so: no student would come up withsomething so peculiar. And to teach the conflict — a phrasethat somehow echoes the nasty notion of "fight the power"— is a way of smuggling political correctness into discussionsunder the cover of an even-handed activity, an approachthat allows an intellectual like Graff to do politicswithout seeming to be a mere political hack.Some observers regard Graff's new political organization,Teachers for a Democratic Culture, as little morethan a press release and a rolodex. But the TDC givesProfessor Graff an opportunity to be a public figure and tostir the debate, an arena to teach the conflict and show thathe is on the right side. Being on the battlements, however,carries certain risks. It is necessary to make hortatory statementsof intent. And for sheer flatulence, it is hard to beat oneof Graff's pronouncements: "Speaking as a leftist, I too findit tempting to turn the curriculum into an instrument of socialtransformation." In the breathtaking narcissism and sillinessof this statement lies the problem of academic culture in ourtime: the vengeful clerks who insist on being relevant, andwill destroy anything, even a venerable institution like theAmerican academic tradition, to makeit happen.Years ago, Gerry Graff wrote anessay about his infantile leftism of the60s in which he concluded: "My politicshad reality only within the politicalarena of university one upmanship andcareerism." He had seen the enemy andnow, more than ever, it is him.Stanley Aronowitz, a Sixties "labororganizer" and now academicentrepreneur is head of the Union ofDemocratic Intellectuals, a group whichproposes itself as an ally for Graff'sTeachers for a Democratic Culture butby common report has even less reality.Before acquiring an academic institute,Stanley was known in the left as "theprophet of the next" — the nextrevolutionary theory, the next revolutionaryclass, the next revolutionaryparty, the next personal incarnation. Asa younger man he became labor organizer-in-residenceat Studies on the Left.As an aging new leftist he got a PhDfrom an Antioch extension school where credit was givenfor "life experience" — apparently in Aronowitz's case hisstreet theater as a 60s radical. Fellow socialist die-hardBogdan Denitch brought him to the Graduate Center at CityUniversity, where Denitch is a professor of sociology. In an actof entrepreneur-ship even Houston Baker might have envied,Aronowitz not only managed to stay at CUNY byorganizing a student demonstration when his tenure wasdenied, but to acquire the academic equivalent of a room ofhis own — the so called Center for Critical Studies, whichsoon became a funded stop on the tour for tenured radicals.The studies and conferences to emanate from theCenter have naturally been critical of the capitalist order.Stanley's major work, Science As Power, advances theStalinist proposition that science is just an instrument of classoppression. After reading it, the distinguished historian ofscience Daniel Kevles wrote in the Times Literary Supplement:"If the author knows much about the content orenterprise of science, he keeps the knowledge well hidden."Aronowitz is also the author of The Crisis in HistoricalMaterialism, explaining that his use of the preposition in isintentional, because in his opinion there is no crisis of"historical materialism" — a concept codified by Stalinwhich is still as good as ever if the glastnostians would stopmeddling.A more proletarian version of the Teachers for DemocraticCulture, the Union of Democratic Intellectuals maybe a rolodex of second raters. But at least it has the honestyto admit, which Graff's organization does not, that it isinvolved in an assault on the university, rather than aresponse to rightwing attacks. "Safeguard and extend thecultural gains we have made": this is how the Aronowitz groupdescribes the tasks ahead.Laboring in the trenches, like Graff and Aronowitz, isjust one half of the PC Mutt and Jeff act. The other halfis represented by people like CatharineStimpson. She cultivates a cultured reasonableness that is astep away from the PC bully, yet her version of sweetness andlight has a Transylvanian shadow across the visage and asmudge of blood at the comer of the mouth.It was the lugubrious Stimpson who stepped into thelists to condemn Carol Ianonne for lacking credentials duringthe struggle over Ianonne's nomination to the NationalEndowment of the Humanities. According to Stimpson,Ianonne's appointment was purely "political." Yet Stimpsonherself, though president of the MLA at the time, was notexactly George Lyman Kittridge. The author of a sappy (andsapphic) bildungsroman one of whose most memorableCatharine Stimpsonmoments has the female protagonist recalling how she wasbeat up by her brother because she had prevailed in a game ofbasketball, Stimpson's oeuvre is almost entirely composedof feminist tracts. No president of the MLA was ever a morepolitical appointment than she.This Mother Hubbard lives in a shoe full of clichés. Sheaffects a wounded tone when asking questions such as whywe cannot be students of Western culture and multiculturalismat the same time, shaking her head in perplexity at the politicalstubbornness of some people. "The PC phenomenon, nothyped up, will eventually dry up," she says. What she means,of course, is that unattended by the media and the Americanpublic, the PC phenomenon will win on the campus and theneverything will be all right.Stimpson calls the 60s her "salad days." To see how fullthe salad bowl was of loco weed, it is necessary only toconsider the prestige accorded to Frederic Jameson, theprince of academic Marxists. No one in the literatureracket is more cited than this Duke professor of what FrederickCrews has called "dialectical immaterialism," and no one isaccorded more respect. Yet this Marxist pedant, ever morecommitted to his ideological fixation during the period of itslong twilight struggle, is in reality the Doctor Demento of thepolitically correct text.His signature phrase is "always historicize." How doeshe himself do this? In Ideologies of Theory, he talks about the"problem" of Chairman Mao, a figure whom he regards withawe: the problem is that Mao stopped too soon in prosecutingthe bloodbath known as the cultural revolution — "drawingback from the ultimate consequences of the process he hadset in motion, when, at the supreme moment of the CulturalRevolution, that of the founding of the Shanghai Commune,he called a halt to the dissolution of the party apparatus andeffectively reversed the direction of this collective experimentas a whole..." The translation for this malevolent"analysis" (in a book published 25 years after the fact,certainly long enough for the historicizing process to takeeffect) is that Jameson, who is still more Mao than thou,believes that China was better off when it was "experimenting"with human lives even more destructively than it doesnow.More Jameson historicizing occurs in thoughts about Castro(he was outraged when the networks' coverage ofGorbachev's visit to Cuba resulted in comparisons betweenFidel and Ferdinand Marcos) and the misunderstood, JosephStalin. "Stalinism is disappearing," Jameson has written,"not because it failed but because it succeeded andfulfilled its historical mission to force therapid industrialization of an underdevelopedcountry..." The mass murder, starvation,lunatic engineering of human souls, andultimate economic bankruptcy of theStalinist "development" slips right by thesophisticated armchair revolutionary, whowould be only too happy to see it happenagain in some other third world place.Why is this man teaching our children?Why is Duke paying him a six figuresalary? What has this tranquilized totalitarianismgot to do with Literature, Jameson'salleged field of expertise?When Jameson applies his theory toactual texts the result is usually opaque.When it is clear it is usually banal, as when hecriticizes The Godfather as "American capitalismin its most systematized and computerized,dehumanized, "multinational,' andcorporate form," in a sentence that reprisesthe rhythms and contents of the defunct NewMasses. Jameson does not involve himselfin the quotidian battles that obsess peoplelike Graff, Aronowitz and Stimpson. Hiswork has done it for him. His theorizing("everything is in the last analysis political")has helped give currency to the current voguefor race/class/gender polemics. His hatredof capitalism and democracy has helpedunderpin the current academic transformation. This mayhelp make up for the lamentable failure of Communism.As we look at the big enchiladas we understand thatthey are not titans of intellectual or political achievement,but what Trotsky used to deride as the"epigones" of an already bankrupt totalitarian tradition. Theycould succeed only within the hermetic seal of the universitywhere they have managed to destroy the laws of supply anddemand for ideas. In advancing their lucrative professionalcareers and in trying to cobble together personal authenticity,they have made American universities into an intellectualwasteland and a standing joke among the hundreds of millionsof people recently liberated by real revolutionariesagainst the very ideas and heroes America's PC academicscherish the most. Woytech Romachevski, a young Pole whocame to America hoping to study at Stanford, spent time onthe campus and came away reconsidering his ambition."Back home these people would have been called socialparasites," he says. "Here they are a privileged class. UnderCommunism the nomenklatura is at least able to build thehydro-electric plants."

PAGE 12workshops squeezed into the same time slots. (The one Iattended on "Gender Justice?: Women and the Law" dealtmainly with expanding sexual harassment litigation andcorporate policies.) The focus was on action rather thanresearch, though many of these women surely would haveobjected to a distinction between the two. The NCRWpamphlet Transforming the Knowledge Base, on sale at oneof the conference display tables, contains this statement byLeslie Hill-Davidson, head of the Women's Studies programat Hunter College: "Activists often say our activism has to beseparate from scholarship. We say, absolutely not. We aregoing to hold them together."On the very first panel,which surveyed post-1960s"feminist movements" in theUnited States, CharlotteBunch, Director of the Center forWomen's Global Leadership [!] atRutgers University, spoke of"creating politically viablestrategies for social change" asthe task of progressive academics.Earlier in her remarks, she hadreminisced rather fondly aboutliving in a commune whereeveryone slept in the same roomand shared clothes. Conceding thatit actually didn't work out very well(people were always hiding thingsaway in acts of bourgeoisindividualism), Bunch summedup, "We can't recreate thesecommunes, but we need toincorporate their vision into socialpolicy." She was appalled by theworldwide trend towardprivatization, and especially by thefact that many people in EasternEurope and Latin Americaidentify women' s liberation withWestern individualism.Co-panelist DeborahRhode, a Stanford law professor,cautioned that "putting womenin power is not the same asempowering women."As she saw it, the goal was to electwomen with the right kind ofpolitics. The unsettling reality thatnot all women share such goalswas acknowledged briefly and obliquely, mostly in vexedreference to the polls which showed that a majority ofwomen did not support Anita Hill. Some panelists explainedthis in terms of race and class, but not everyone wassatisfied with such explanations. One agitated member of theaudience inquired, "Why should we believe national polls? Imean, Susan Faludi showed in Backlash — I haven't read itbut I've heard about it — how the media distort stories thatconcern women." Rhode resisted the temptation to agree,noting that all the polls had been fairly consistent, butBlanche Cook snapped, "Well, I don't believe in polls. Theyare always skewered [sic] in a way that doesn't make anysense for us."Since Cook had urged us to "apply deconstuction topolitical rhetoric" (she herself had certainly deconstructedthe life of Eleanor Roosevelt by making her into a posthumouslesbian), I decided to take a closer look at what thespeakers were really saying when, nearly to a woman, theyemphasized the need for a diversity of feminist voices andcautioned against imposing a single vision on all feminists. Itwas not diversity of opinion that they had in mind but of suchcategories as race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, disability:as Keohane put it most succinctly, "like-minded butdifferently focused women.""Diversity is not about tolerance of differences, orabout management of differences, but abouttransformation," said Chandra Mohanty, head of women'sstudies at Hamilton College, though she was quite vague aboutwhat this transformation would entail, or about the kind of"alternative realities" that she said minorities had thepotential to bring to the academy. At the same session,entitled "Theorizing Diversity, Diversifying Theory,"Catharine Stimpson referred intransparently dismissive terms to a "conservative" responseto women's studies that embraces equal rights butalso "valorizes" Western values, the family, and"colorblind standards of justice," and downplays explorationof "the sex/gender system."In response to my question, she agreed that suchideas could have a place in feminist discourse; but theyobviously had no place at the conference. To everyonethere, women's studies were self-evidently not just apolitical enterprise but part of a broader push for a newcurriculum, geared, in Stimpson's words, to "a multiracial,multicultural, multispecied world." Multispeciedwas a nice touch.Nonetheless, the outside challenge from critics of"political correctness" was hard to ignore. Instead of confrontingthe issue directly and defending their commitmentto p.c, Stimpson and Rhode presided over a workshopwhich rhetorically wished it away, agreeing that outside ofa few unfortunate incidents, political correctness was aninvention of the right abetted by the media and somemisguided liberals.This may be the party line on p.c, but the Radcliffeconference often verged on a caricature of a p.c. smorgasbord.The recent events in Los Angeles were described as"the L.A. uprising" or "insurrection," and Angela Davis,former vice presidential candidate of the Communist PartyUSA, was mentioned as a heroine of women's liberation. (Aposter of Davis, identified as a "human rights activist" —which presumably makes the Stalinist CPUSA a humanrights organization — hung in the student center whereconference literature was displayed.) Blanche Wiesen Cook(in attendance again) spoke of how "completely militarizedour society is" and referred to the United States, only half injest, as "the Evil Empire." NCRW president Mary EllenCapek cited the term "unwed mother" as an example of"androcentric" bias embedded in our language, because "itpresupposes that the norm is to be a wed mother." Rhodepointed out, to the delight of the audience, that "only eightpercent of the world's population are white men. That's avery encouraging fact." A genteel elderly woman earnestlysaid, "Coming to terms with one's whiteness is a verydifficult and complicated lifelong task."There were a few cautious voices of dissent. At thework-shop on political correctness, lawyer and author WendyKaminer ventured that part of feminism's image problemwas its insularity—academic women speaking to one anotherin an esoteric jargon. This line of argument did not get very far.Psychologist Mary Roth Walsh, a visiting scholar at Harvard,countered, "Isn't it too much of a burden on the oppressed toask that they not only develop a theory of their oppression butthat they make it understood?"Here, I was pleasantly surprised by Stimpson, whodeclared, in her somewhat theatrical manner, "How can I sithere and describe myself as oppressed? Most women in theworld are. But for me to use that term is a bizarre perversionof language." Despite her reputation as the grande dame ofp.c. and her share of weird moments (such as this descriptionof the ways in which women have oppressed others: "Whitewomen held slaves of bothsexes; Nazi women killedJews of both sexes; and affluentwomen hire servants of bothsexes"), Stimpson, in fact,came close to being a voice ofreason and moderation. Shestated her opposition tocampus speech codes,suggesting that some anti-p.c.barbs were manifestations ofa "satiric streak" natural toundergraduates. Later, shecriticized the tendency inwomen's studies to glorify alogical and subjective"ways of knowing," and tookfeminists to task fordisregarding the role of religionin women's lives.("This is why many womendon't like feminists").At the Mondaymorning closing forum,after an exhortation fromKeohane to "liberate ourUtopian consciousness,"there was another attempt toinject some reality and senseinto the discussion. AMidwestern history professorpointed out that a veryimportant issue had beenoverlooked — the reluctanceof most femalecollege students, no matter howindependent or career-minded, to identify with feminism —and asked, "What is it about feminism and about our approachthat puts young women off?"No one seemed interested in pursuing this question. Onewoman declared that young women who do not considerthemselves feminists have been brainwashed by "the backlash";another said that "we must deconstruct the fear of feminism" tofind that it is rooted in "homophobia." A young instructor fromTemple University, Laura Levitt, commented that "We areengaged in a political struggle and what we must give ourstudents is not quote-unquote objectivity but an understandingof the power dynamic."In her wrap-up speech, Keohane remarked on all thehumor and laughter at the conference, referring, I suppose, to allthe jokes about shopping and Dan Quayle. On Sunday night,there was also official humor by "feminist comedian/socialcommentator" Emily Levine, who started by distinguishing herperformance from conventional stand-up comedy in which thecomic dominates the audience. The only difference I could seewas that Levine, something of a poor woman's Lily Tomlin,wasn't all that funny. She did, however, have one inadvertentlyhilarious line: "It's amazing what happens when people spendall their time around other people who think exactly likethemselves. They just lose all logic."She was talking about male generals at the Pentagon.

PAGE 13Please accept my subscription. Politically I disagree withyou 100%. I do not know why people who imagine themselveson the left regularly defend the things you attack. Ihave been wondering for years when someone was going tocome along and puncture this smarmy and phony balloon. Ihave been asking everyone for a long time, what is everybodyafraid of? Apparently they have been afraid of theratlike psychology of many professors. If you have to livewith it, it can be murder, as your piece on the case of AllenGribben shows.Feminism has induced a sort of stupefaction in the academiccommunity that will last at least as long as the young womenwho are now being appointed without any serious scholarshipto their credit are alive, and that, is a long time. TheHumanities and the Social Sciences are probably dead foranother 20 years, and the hard sciences will look down theirnoses at them even more than before, and rightly so.I think Fidel Castro should get better treatment from you. Ihope your journal prospers. P.C. is B.S.. Create controversy!And don't lie! This nation has been brain dead since about1976, when the Lesbian Left gained ascendancy.Politically correct speech is the special preoccupation ofliberal arts majors because it reflects their instinctive believe(you could call it a class ideology) that language rules reality.But linguists know that things really work the other wayaround: Words take their meaning from how they are used.When usage is changed without a corresponding change inreality, the replacement term — whether you call it politicallycorrect or euphemistic —gradually acquires the negativeconnotations of the word it replaced. This is why thepursuit of politically correct speech is never-ending. I'vealready heard people (such as a working-class blackwoman I passed while she was being panhandled) speak thewords "homeless person" with the same derogatoryintonation formerly used with the word "bum." In a coupleof years, "jobless" and "homeless" will have acquiredpolitically incorrect associations and will have to bereplaced. My money is "unwaged" and "unsheltered."Charles PerryI do not recall subscribing to your journal. Curious aboutwho or what published it, I looked at the listing of editorialstaff and publisher on p. 2. It indicates that all the "editorsYour front page picture of a PC rioter was inaccurate.This picture is representative of the kind of spuriousdisinformation campaign you and people like you spread.Superficially, what you say appears to make sense, but thenthere are these huge leaps of logic that just don't make senseif you examine the facts.have identifiable male names, while all the "assistants" haveidentifiable female names. After reading some of the articles,this intriguing fact came to seem more sinister. I expect thatyour mishmash of rumor, innuendo, non-sequesters, anonymousattacks, and rabble-rousing rhetoric, so disgustinglysimilar to the worst of McCarthyism, will be quoted as "fact"by others who, like yourselves, want to return to a time whenwhite men securely ruled the academy — a world, like that ofHeterodoxy, where men are "editors" and women are "assistants."I am already too busy to read all the serious academicjournals which uphold some standard of accuracy. I do nothave time to read trash. Please remove my name from yourmailing list.Diane G. CrowderProfessor of FrenchCornell University(Editor's note: The above letter is a condensed version of afour page single spaced textual analysis of "LSU's WarAgainst Women " which appeared in the last issue o/Heterodoxy.)Lawrence Mannery, Ph.D.New York CityThank you for your naming of U. Wisconsin's DonnaShalala on your list of Ten Worst College Administrators.My favorite Shalala story is that she was "surprised anddistressed" at the rise of anti-Semitism on campus in theweeks following the campus visit of Louis Farrakhan (whichshe had sponsored and paid for).Carol Noll PS: Heterodoxy?As opposed to what? Homodoxy?Your readers might more clearly understand the phenomenologyof the "P.C." movement if they were more familiarwith the recent history of totalist religious cults (and similarpolitical and self-actualization groups). What happened toAllen Gribben at the University of Texas (shunning) is acommon cultic phenomenon. After all, Gribben didn't havea mere intellectual difference with his tormentors—he wasactually trafficking with Satan's legions.Similarly, when University of Minnesota coeds are"ordered" by their professors to tell their classmates that theyare lesbians, they are being directed toward the hallowedfootsteps of the People's Temple flock of the Rev. Jim Jones,whose inner circle (the Planning Commission—shortened,ironically, to "P.C") was regularly required to confess tobeing gay or lesbian (see Jeannie Mills' Six Years With God,if you have a strong stomach). Mr. Colliers' phrase in theGribben article about "occult folk rituals" is far from coincidental.Robert H. Chesky, M.D.Brighton, MichiganDear David and Peter,Since I am a politically active, progressive, female, bisexual,socialist, pro-choice intellectual, I am sure my viewswill be of little interest to such knee-jerk reactionaries asyourselves, but I feel compelled to remind you that the entire"PC" issue (reminiscent of cointelpro operations) is clearlyan invention of right-wing fascists. Why don't you guysget real jobs?!?!?!?"Correctly" Yours, Louise D. Brown-Marsh Dear K.L.Billingsley,Because of your article, I now have some new references touse in my classes. Especially W. Williams' The Spirit andthe Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture(Heterodoxy, May '92). Why don't you see if you can readWill Roscoe’s Zuni Man-Women (University of NewMexico, 1992) with an open mind.Peter Schmidt Department ofEnglish Swarthmore

PAGE 14David Bromwich,Politics by OtherMeans: Higher Educationand GroupThinking. Yale UniversityPress, 252pages, $30.00. Reviewedby SaulMorson.No one, including the present reviewer,will agree with everything in thisbook. But it is by far the most thoughtfulanalysis of the current decrepitude reigningin humanities departments. With precisionand without diplomacy, Bromwich exposesthe bad faith, shoddy logic, and weak graspof history that support prevailing orthodoxies.He writes with cold fury, alternatingsober analyses with acid wit and pungentaphorisms. There is more than a whiff ofJonathan Swift here.Most of Brownwich's attack is directedat the fashionable academic left, buthe is careful to disdain potential allies onthe right as well. In fact, one senses that hefeels uncomfortable with the very possibilityof having allies anywhere, lest theycompromise his resolute independence.Bromwich hates above all thingsgroupthink, and so he chooses an epigraphfrom Simone Weil: "The intelligence isdefeated as soon as the expression of one'sthoughts is preceded, explicitly or implicitly,by the little word 'we.'" There is no"we" in this book, only an "I" who haslearned a lot from others, to be sure andvarious noxious "theys."Intellectual collectivism appallsBromwich, and, with ostentatiousunfashionability, he cites a whole pagefrom Emerson's "Self Reliance." He callsthis essay "a great and liberating work witha wrong title. For it is nothing but a series ofaphorisms against conformity" not a baddescription of Bromwich's own book. Withone ironic eye directed at his politicallycorrect colleagues, he takes deliciouslywicked delight in explaining that Emerson"was a white Protestant male who came toknow, in nineteenth-century America, whata sickness group thinking could be forthose who were in power." Just in casesomeone should use the last phrase as adispensation, Bromwich assures us that"The truths of the essay apply no less togroups that conceive of themselves as outof power and that seek a correspondinglysurer control over their membership."Emerson reminds us: "A man must considerwhat a blind-man's-bluff is this gameof conformity. If I know your sect I anticipateyour argument."These comments figure inBromwich's critique of "the new fundamentalists,"who enforce a rigid, left-wingmoralism on the university that makes realthinking impossible. He retells several horrorstories, of a type now depressinglyfamiliar: one concerns a professor at HampshireCollege whose contract renewal washeld hostage to a charge that he had failed "tomount a 'Third World' challenge to 'thecanon'." From the Miss Saigon episode (thedemand that only an Asian should be allowedto act in a key role) to the assumption thatprofessors can only understand works writtenby those of the same (racial, ethnic, sexual)group, Bromwich distills the repulsive messagepropagated by the new orthodoxy, ittakes one to know one.This is a doctrine that appeals to an"idolatrous mind" that worships ethnic identitywhile insisting that "sympathy comes inthe exact coinage of a given group.... [But]With a work of genius, there is no centralcasting." The next step is the "self idolatry"of a group, a pleasant form of worship praisedby current fashion as a new virtue. It provokesa "principled bigotry" and the conjuringof "generic stigmata." Above all, thedoctrine it takes one to know one leads toprofound moral disfigurement.This is a sick way of feeling. It confersnot just consolation, or compassion, but meriton victims from the sheer fact of their havingsuffered—a compensatory device that is notlikely to inhibit the taste for inflicting newsufferings... Slavery for American blacks,and the Holocaust for American Jews, havebeen made into sacred subjects. The resultis...a pride that is close to fear, close tocontempt, liable to stagger hope and to stunfeeling most of all in those who hug it tothemselves most fiercely.Bromwich understands that those whoprofess and enforce such groupthink "wantno single person ever to survive as singular...the caring groups are really hard as nails:they want to destroy us, each of us, andalways for the sake of all."And so we have Afro-American Studiesfor blacks, and Asian-American Studiesfor Asian-Americans, right down the line: "agenetic code for intellectual identity." Allthis is happening, bit by bit, in part becausemany who don't accept this view of educationhave acquiesced in it. Bromwich is verygood at inflicting discomfort on such selfdeceivingcowards. Education, he remindsus, should create people who can reflect, whocan really think, but college today is "morethan a license for conformity, it is a foursentence to conformity."Bromwich outlines and defends a viewof education, society, and the self that isindebted to Burke, Hume, William James,and Michael Oakeshott, among others. Theposition, which requires both real openmindednessand an appreciation of tradition,is immensely appealing: "Higher educationis the learning of certain habits, above all ahabit of sustained attention to things outsideone's familiar circle of interests," includingthe great and varied works of the past, whichis one reason that it is better to teach ParadiseLost than Gilligan's Island. Bromwich citeswith approval Oakeshott's idea of liberallearning as "an adventure in a precise sense.It has no pre-ordained course to follow... It isa predicament, not a journey." It has nounambiguous message, and what it offers usis "aids to reflection, rather than directives...It has no meaning as a whole; it cannot belearned or taught in principle."If this is far from the left orthodoxy thatviews tradition as a vast conspiracy of deadwhite males, it is also distant from the view ofsome conservatives, who take cultural traditioneither as a homogeneous repository fromwhich to draw quotations or as a set of vitaminswith which to inject the young.Bromwich devotes his second chapter to anattack on such conservatives, especiallyGeorge Will, who comes off as a pompous,paternalistic prig. With devastating effect,he compares Will's distrust of tolerance anddialogue to Marcuse's noxious notion of"repressive tolerance"; by the end of hisanalysis, Will's doctrine of education as"soulcraft" sounded (to me ) a lot like theStalinist notion of "engineering humansouls." But Bromwich's attack on WilliamBennett is a bit strained, and one sometimeshas the impression that Bennett would bemore likely to endorse the views Bromwichhimself defends rather than the onesBromwich attributes to Bennett.But it is telling that even in his attackson the conservatives, Bromwich writes withoutthe deep scorn he directs at his academiccolleagues. If in principle, the danger toliberal education could come from the right,it now (as opposed to thirty years ago)comes primarily from the self-styled left. Tobe sure, the blurb to this book, and itsrhetorical stance, situates it in the lonely,radical center. But there is little doubt that itsenergy derives primarily from the attack onthe left.In large part, that is becauseBromwich's own ideas derive from one traditionof thought that could be called themost intelligent version of conservatism,though, to be sure, it could also be called anintelligent version of moderate liberalism."Tradition in this view is the gradual accretionof reflective practices." Whatever onemight choose to call it, such thinking isskeptical of grand theories; distrusts therapiespromising sudden enlightenment; andrecommends that we think of ourselves inpartnership with a cherished past and future.It places great value on what Burke called"prejudices" in a positive sense, the cultivationof good habits of judgment to produce"wisdom without reflection." It does nottreat currently favored intellectual movementsas if they were somehow free from thelimitations that have affected all prior ones.Some of Bromwich's finest satiricalthrusts are directed at the current combinationof radicalism with professionalism,which allows professors to advance theircareers while claiming to be reforming theworld by doing so. "Professional development,"Bromwich remarks, "really has nomore moral claim on us than real-estatedevelopment." He returns again and again toa statement in the (collectively authored)pamphlet Speaking for the Humanities:"Professionalization makes thought possible."Bromwich asks: "Are there alsosome kinds of thought it makes impossible?"One rapidly gets the idea thatBromwich much prefers the company ofeducated laymen to that of professors, andthat he wished professors were, well, a lotless professional. To laymen it seems absurdto teach undergraduates mass culture insteadof Milton, nor would they fall for the stupidconfusion of "popular" with "democratic":"It is as if Colonel Sanders, because hisproducts are consumed by millions, were tobe treated as an authentic representative ofSouthern military folk cuisine, and as if toquestion his practice by cooking somethingbetter or going to a real restaurant were theexpression of antidemocratic elitism."Of course, the academics who lectureon mass culture do so from a curious positionof contempt for those who consume it. Withcondescending approval, the professors ofWesterns seem to say: everything is as goodas everything else, so go ahead, enjoy yourpopular forms; but let us educate you poorsouls out of "false consciousness" so youcan understand their real content just as wedo: "My generous endorsement of all yourpresent habits is thus matched by my unselfishwillingness to tell you which of thosehabits are depraved."Bromwich is at his best when he writesabout what he knows best, the daily hypocrisiesof his colleagues. In his last chapter, heoffers, in the form of an extended fictionalexample, a delightful account of intellectualbullying that makes promotion decisionsshallow — deeply shallow, if the phrasemay be allowed. Brilliantly, he describeshow distinguished older scholars afraid ofseeming out-of-date fawn on twenty-eightyear olds, who in turn now confer "a newkind of compliment... the act of invertedpatronage in which a well-known youngerscholar says something nice about a wellknownelder" who has shown himself capableof imitating the compliment-payer.And so "A Renaissance scholar in a bookreview embraces his mentor for having adjustedto a trend with which the student'sname is identified."But Bromwich is at his worst when heoffers obiter dicta about politics, usually inthe form of nasty comments about Reaganor Bush. Even people who agree with himwill, if they are thoughtful, be embarrassedby the tone in which he makes these statements,as if no evidence were needed, as ifno one with a brain could possibly disagree,as if he did not realize how superficial thesepassing comments are. Even Bromwichseems to have been hanging around academicstoo long. At these moments, he wouldhave done better to recall his own point thatunless one is relying on groupthink morethan mere assertion is needed. He might alsoconsider his liberal idea that intelligent peoplemight actually disagree, and that such honestdisagreement is, after all, what democratic,open politics is all about. Unfortunately,Bromwich's concluding sentence isin this superficial mode: "There will be noend of the unreal politics of the academyuntil we have a real politics outside theacademy." This statement comes out of theblue, and so it is hard to tell what Bromwichmeans, but there is more than a hint of thepolitical reductionism, and the shifting ofresponsibility, that Bromwich himself hasso brilliantly criticized.

PAGE 15The Politics of LiberalEducation, eds.Darryl J. Gless andBarbara HerrnsteinSmith. Duke UniversityPress, 1992. Reviewedby AndrewWachtel.The contributors to The Politics ofLiberal Education, many but by no means allof whom belong to the so-called cultural left,try to convince the reader that their ideas arein no way radical. Like politicians aiming forthe middle of the road, their suggestions forchange are presented as mainstream tradition,pluralism, citizenship, freedom. EvenStanley Fish, who usually takes the mostcontroversial position possible as if by instinct,seems remarkably conciliatory:'Transformation, however, is always a painfulprocess, at least for those persons (and Iam often one of them) who want things tostay the same, and one can understand theJuvenalian laments ("we are going to hell ina hand-basket') even if one is not moved toecho them. In the end, however, I prefer thequieter tones of pragmatic inquiry." Whocould disagree in principle with such a reasonablechap?And sure enough, any time you aretempted to disagree with the views of theseinnocent purveyors of good ol' Americanvalues, you find yourself lumped rhetoricallyinto the same camp as Allan Bloom,William Bennett, and E.D. Hirsch, Jr. (whofigure in this collection as an unholy trinityof the right) and are accused with them of"having ideology," being guilty of "fundamentalism,"and displaying "anti-democraticviews." This strategy of damnation by associationis quite effective in making thosewho disagree think twice before raising objections.It allows these contributors to dismisspotential objections out of hand whilestill presenting themselves as reasonablemoderates.Barbara Herrnstein Smith explains inher introduction that the conference out ofwhich this volume grew "was designed torespond to attacks on current humanities teachingand curricular reforms." This statement isinteresting because it claims that the contributorsare simultaneously representative ofthe main stream of current humanities teachingand at the forefront of "reform." In fact,the central core of contributors to this volume(Smith herself, Stanley Fish, Eve KosofskySedgwick, Henry A. Giroux, Mary LouisePratt, Gerald Graff, and Henry Louis Gates,Jr.) do not represent anything like the majorityof today's teachers of the Humanities.They are, rather, a small but extremely vocalgroup who wish to change the course of themainstream of the American university. Theirclaim to have the best interests of the Humanitiesat heart is directly related to theireffort to seize the center. It allows them toappear to be spokespersons for Americanvalues while nevertheless retaining a reformisthalo.What are they advocating? 1) Seriousrevision in (or abolition of) the canon ofliterary texts that are taught to Americanuniversity students, and 2) a change in theway the Humanities and Humanities teachingare viewed in this country. Now, one couldmake a serious case for canon revision ofsome sort, and there are a number of interestingarticles in this collection devoted to intelligentexplorations of such topics as the mechanismsof canon formation. These are accompanied,however, by a core group of essaysthat asks us to modify or abandon the canonnot for any reasons related to aesthetics (Godforbid!) or historical accuracy or any otherkind of argument, but instead by appeals tosome rather questionable goals that for thesecontributors are beyond questioning.Mary Louise Pratt's article, "Humanitiesfor the Future: Reflections on the WesternCulture Debate at Stanford" is illustrative.Pratt attempts to naturalize a positionthat runs more or less as follows: because theUnited States contains people from an increasinglywide variety of ethnic groups andbecause we must adjust to new global realities,we need a true multi-cultural curriculumto replace the previous one which is elitist andnormative. Accomplishing this, she believes,would be fairly easy: "The world is full ofmulticultural, multi-ethnic nations, so thereare plenty of models around." But are theysuccessful models? When one thinks of whatis going on in some of these model countries(the former Soviet Union and the formerYugoslavia come to mind) it is not at all clearthat we should want the United States tobecome like them. Perhaps the previousAmerican model wherein ethnic groups kepttheir own identity in the home and the localcommunity but did not have bilingual schoolingnor teachers "sensitive" to the uniquecultural heritage of Germans, Italians,Lithuanians, etc. was better.The second and even more problematiccall here is for the full-scale politicization ofthe liberal arts program according to the tenetsof the cultural left. This, in the words ofHenry A. Giroux, means "enhancing andennobling the meaning and purpose of liberalarts education by giving it a truly central placein the social life of a notion where it canbecome a public forum for addressing preferentiallythe needs of the poor, the dispossessed,and the disenfranchised." Now, ifGiroux wants to address the needs of thedispossessed, well and good, but I teach Russianliterature, and I am well aware of whathappened both to the Humanities and to teachingin a society that demanded and enforceddiscussions of literary texts solely in the contextof their political content. And despite thesugar-coated tone of most of the pieces in thiscollection, the notion, dear to the hearts ofmost of the contributors, that the Humanitiesis and should be conceived of as nothing butpolitics is never far from the surface.Giroux, for example, claims that hisSoviet-sounding program would "provide astarting point for linking liberal arts educationto a public philosophy in which thecurriculum is... posed as part of an ongoingstruggle informed by a project of possibilitywhich extends the most noble of human capacitieswhile simultaneously developing thepotentialities of democratic public life." Butthe self-important notion that the very existenceof this country depends on what a handfulof professors of literature (whether of theleft or right) at a couple of American universitiesdo is, to my mind, laughable. I wouldtend instead to agree with the conclusionsdrawn by Bruce Kuklick in his short but wellreasonedcontribution, "The Emergence ofLIBERALEDUCATIONEdi ted by D A R R Y I J . G L E S S andB A R B A R A H E R R N S T E I N S M I T Hthe Humanities": "I think it is clear that thedominant push in the American learnedtradition has always been conservative —to defend reigning tendencies in the cultureand to justify the world being as it is ... Iwould also add that, so far as I can tell, bothacademic conservatives and their criticshave been peripheral as causal agents towhatever social changes do occur."This conclusion brings to mind adiscussion I once had with a Soviet emigreprofessor of literature. He was commentingon what he liked best about Americanuniversities. "You know," he mused, "thebest thing about academic life here is thatit changes so quickly. If you don't likesomething that is going on, you can justwait a few years and it will have disappeared."With any luck this changeabilityof American university life will not change.We will continue to muddle along as wehave always done, rejecting dogmatic appeals(however moderate their phrasing),teaching what we want because we wantto, and giving our students the best we canin a system riddled with contradictions andultimately controlled by no one.

PAGE 16THE UNFORGIVINGOR NEARLY TWO DECADES after with an unspeakable outrage and their tarnishedreputations would not be fully re-the Sixties, the military remained the oneFinstitutionable to withstand the baleful stored.influences of the radical left. Now that the cold What is going on in America whenwar is over, this immunity appears to have seasoned fliers can have their careers blightedended. A series of minor incidents — a because of a possible offense to a politician?drunken party at which crotches were grabbed in What is the problem with feminists whoa gantlet ritual and a skit with sexual innuendos can't handle this kind of trivia? And yetmocking a female member of Congress— claim the "right" to enter a war zone andhave fueled a national hysteria about "sexual engage in combat.harassment" and a political witch-hunt that has Schroeder's combat bill (which wouldempowered the left, and that threatens to also make women eligible for a militarydeconstruct the military in the way other institutionshave been deconstructed before. It is seen by advocates as a "wedge" measuredraft) is the other side of the feminist assault.Already the careers of a Secretary of the which would mean the end of what SchroederNavy, 4 Admirals, a military aide to the president,and 3 "top gun" flight commanders have the military. A Presidential Commission hascalls "institutional bias against women" inbeen blighted because of guilty associations been appointed to review the issue and iswith the tainting incidents. A question mark scheduled to make a recommendation inhas been placed over the careers of thousandsof officers, while star-chamber interrogationshave been convened in an attempt to ferret outadditional culprits. Finally, every male in thenavy—judged guilty under the draconian lawof the new Puritanism before the fact — hasbeen condemned to 8 hours of re-education in"sensitivity training" classes, designed to purifytheir wayward souls.Fanning the fires of this investigativefury is a group of feminist legislators led byDemocrat Pat Schroeder, a ranking member ofthe Armed Services Committee and author ofa bill to allow women in combat. In a July 9letter to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, sheput the Pentagon on notice that "Tailhook '91is a symptom of a larger problem," that theresignation of the Navy Secretary does notbegin "to address the problem," and that furtherinvestigations and prosecutions would berequired to purge the navy of bad attitudes.Schroeder herself was the catalyst forthe second Navy "scandal," an offending skitat a private show in the officers' club at theMiramar Naval Station. The "Tom Cat Follies"included lampoons of George Bush andDan Quayle, but it was two skits about PatSchroeder that provoked the lightning. So horriblewere the thought crimes committed onthat stage, that no media has seen fit to reportthem.Heterodoxy has no such compunctions.The first was an altered nursery rhyme:"Hickory, Dickory dock, Pat Schroeder suckedmy cock." The second was an episode in whichSchroeder goes to Europe for a sex changeoperation. A photo of the new Pat Schroeder isthen produced, and lo! it is Dick Cheney. Notfar off the mark, considering that Schroederhas been mentioned as a possible Secretary ofDefense in a Clinton Administration.Fearful of retribution from a Congressionalantagonist, the Navy terminated thecommands and careers of five "top gun" officerspresent at the Tom Cat Follies. Althoughtwo of the five were later re-instated, the Navymade it clear that they were still associatedNovember.The feminist argument isfamiliar: By excluding women from combat,the patriarchy u n d e r m i n e swomen's self-esteem, causes them to beperceived as inferior and thus structurestheir oppression. Anyone who fails to beimpressed by this formula is self-convictedas a sexist bigot.Studies conducted at West Pointhave identified 120 physical differences betweenmen and women that may bear onmilitary requirements. Nonetheless, the USNaval Academy has been indicted by thenew guardians of public virtue for not movingfast enough to increase its female enrollment.Senator Barbara Mikulski has demanded"an attitude change" at the academy,and an official Committee on Women'sIssues headed by Rear Admiral Virgil Hillhas called for the "immediate dismissal ofsenior officers who question the role ofwomen in the military." To question — toquestion—the role of women in the militaryis now regarded as unacceptable sexism bythe military itself.Under the guidance of its feministcommissars, our newly sensitized militaryhas moved into the realm of the utterlysurreal. Thus the Air Force has established aSERE program (Survival, Evasion, Resistanceand Escape), including its own "prisonerof war" camp in the state of Washingtonto de-sensitize its male recruits so thatthey won't react like men when femaleprisoners are tortured. Thus Schroeder andher allies have harassed the military intocreating a program that brainwashes men sothat they won't care what happens to women.That's consciousness-raising, feminist style.Another form of consciousness-raisinginvolves the suppression of inconvenientfacts. At the Commission hearings onSchroeder's bill, testimony was given on thesuppression of a report on the performance ofwomen troops in Desert Storm. In particular,women were unavailable for duty at a ratethree to four times that of the men recruits.Non-deployability — the technical term forthis critical form of absenteeism — has seriousimplications for unit cohesion and combateffectiveness in war situations.If covering up women's deficiencies is oneprime path of political correctness, theother is "gender norming" — the practice ofcreating a double standard so thatPat Schroeder women are measured inperformance against other womenrather than men. "Gender norming" isnow the rule at all military service academies,and so is the cover-up of this practice.At West Point, the official position isthat there have been no negative effects ofadmitting women to the academy. Thefacts, as a recent Heritage study by RobertKnight points out, are different. Women cadetstake "comparable" training when theycannot meet the physical standards for malecadets (in load-bearing tasks, 50% of thewomen score below the bottom 5% of themen). Women's scores in exercises are"weighted" to compensate for their deficiencies,while peer ratings have been eliminatedaltogether because women were scoring toolow.The men's training program has beendowngraded as well. Cadets no longer trainin combat boots because women were experiencinghigher rates of injury. Running withheavy weapons has been eliminated becauseit is "unrealistic and therefore unappropriate"to expect women to do it. The famed"recondo" endurance week during whichcadets used to march with full backpacks andundergo other strenuous activities has beeneliminated, as have upper-body strengthevents in the obstacle course.It is one thing to have second-rateprofessors in the humanities because of affirmativeaction quotas that lower standards.But a second rate officer corps?Not surprisingly, resentment on thepart of male cadets is high. One indication isthat more than 50% of the women cadets atWest Point reported that they had been sexuallyharassed last year.It is a perfectly sinister combination.Rub men's noses in arbitrariness and unfairness,and then charge them with sexual harassmentwhen they react. It is also a perfectprescription for accumulating power and controllingresources. Which is what this witchhunt— no different in this regard from anyother — is ultimately about. For every malewho falls from grace because he is suspectedof sexual harassment, or of defending standardsthat may be unfavorable to women, orof not reacting strongly enough to sexualharassment, there is a politically correct careerofficer or politician ready to achievegrace by prosecuting the progressive cause.Representative Beverly Byron, a Schroederally, has been mentioned as a possible Secretaryof the Navy; Pat Schroeder has her sightsset on Defense.What qualifies a Pat Schroeder to attemptto intimidate the entire American militaryestablishment and to shape its destinythrough the next generation? During the coldwar Schroeder and her supporters in the Congressionalleft worked overtime to hobbleand disarm the United States in the face of theSoviet threat. In 1982, with the Red Armyoccupying Afghanistan, with 50,000 Cubantroops waging civil war in Ethiopia andAngola, with a Communist base establishedon the American mainland, with a Communistinsurgency raging in El Salvador, withthousands of nuclear warheads in CentralEurope and Warsaw Pact forces outnumberingNATO troops by a two to one margin,Congresswoman Schroeder authored anamendment to reduce the number of U.S.military personnel stationed overseas by half.In recent editions of the Congressional Quarterly,she is noted for her efforts againstnuclear testing, while the Soviets were stillour adversaries, against further developmentof the MX missile, against proposed fundingfor the strategic defense initiative and the B-2 bomber — and against authorizing thepresident to use force to stop Saddam Hussein.The military is the one American institutionthat survived the Sixties intact. Nowunder attack from feminists like Schroeder, itthreatens to become a casualty of currentradical fashions. The worst crimes of ourcentury have been committed by radicals inthe name of social justice. Let's not add theweakening of America's military to the depressinglist of disasters of these Utopias thatfailed.DavidHorowitz