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Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Sunday, November 28, 2004

UD'S GUEST APPEARANCE ON CBN, WITH PAT ROBERTSON AND JIM NELSON BLACK, AUTHOR OF FREEFALL OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY




"BLACK: It started in the 1960s, but in the 1970s it went underground. We thought that when the riots ended, that perhaps the dangers went away. But the dangers are now worse, because they are now ideological dangers and philosophical dangers, and ideas that crept in, especially from France. Things like postmodernism and moral relativism. Now it has seeped into every course, and in every curriculum in the university campuses.

ROBERTSON: What are they teaching at these secular universities? I was watching a couple of interviews with Tom Wolfe, who’s written a book essentially on the sexual morality and other things about the current crop of college students. What are they teaching?

BLACK: Well, basically, what they are not teaching are the things you and I learned at college. They are not teaching freshman English nor American history, nor basic mathematics and science. They are teaching radical courses about sexuality, and benign courses on vampires and the undead. That is actually the name of one course.

ROBERTSON: Teaching them about vampires! That’s ridiculous. A college course?

BLACK: Precisely. But mom and dad don't realize what the students are learning.

ROBERTSON: Well, not only mom and dad, but big-buck donors who are funding Yale and Harvard and Princeton don't know it.

BLACK: That’s right. And that is where the answer has to come from. Mom and dad and the donors, and the students who are going to be enrolling nest semester.

ROBERTSON: Vampires…

BLACK: It is in the book. I could give you the name of it. It is a major university like Cornell that is teaching a course like that.

ROBERTSON: Why would anybody in higher education want to teach children about vampires? I mean, vampires.

BLACK: Juggling. The Physics of Juggling is a course that is being offered, and the University of Michigan offers a course on how to be gay. So there are things that are definitely shocking.

ROBERTSON: Well, that is an eye opener, isn't it? Boy. Well, what are the professors doing to indoctrinate the students? Are they just allowing the students to express themselves as they will, or is there thought control?

BLACK: Well, certainly in the humanities and sociology departments, Pat, the agenda is political, from day one. We have stories in the book about students who began the first day of class with the professor saying, “How many of you voted for George Bush?” Two or three brave students raised their hands. Then he said, “How can you be such an idiot?” And then he proceeds to indoctrinate the class to this liberal bias.

ROBERTSON: The Marxists back in the 1930s used to go after capitalism, the American way, and Russians were better and Communism was better. Then Communism fell, and they said that the only people who believed in Marxism were college professors caught in the 1960's time warp. And they’re still there. But their warp has changed. It is not Marxism anymore, is it?

BLACK: It is. In fact, Marxism is the controlling doctrine on the university campus today. Capitalism is negative to most university professors; I would say 60 percent of them, as Marxism was 30 years ago.

ROBERTSON: And what about this whole sexual revolution that seems to be so prevalent in college?

BLACK: I think this is what is so troubling to me, Pat, because it is actually taking the lives of our students. As many as 70 percent of college students are sexually active today; as many as half of those, or more, have STD's and many of them don't know it.

ROBERTSON: Back up. 70 percent are sexually active, and of that 70 percent, half of them have sexually transmitted diseases?

BLACK: That's correct.

ROBERTSON: And they are unaware of what they’ve got?

BLACK: Many of them don’t know it. And sometimes that can be AIDS and HIV.

ROBERTSON: They are carriers?

BLACK: Even at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and other universities that I talk about in this book, and interviews I have done on those campuses, ‘hooking up’ is the new fad. That means having sex with anybody, any time, and you try not to know the name of the person with whom you’re having a relationship.

ROBERTSON: Jim, say that again?

BLACK: Are we shocked?

ROBERTSON: I am totally shocked. You know, again, Tom Wolfe. He is a pretty good author. He said these girls have these diaries with codes, and they rate the guy they are having sex with, and put code letters down as to what kind of stuff they did while they were hooking up.

BLACK: Right. Tom Wolfe's novel could be a documentary, it is so close to the facts. He spent four years getting information to write that novel and it is shockingly true. If you think it is just fiction, think again.

ROBERTSON: These are the future leaders of this nation.

BLACK: Yes, that is what scares me. Of the four candidates that ran in the 2004 presidential elections, three are former Yale students. Yale, Harvard, Princeton – these universities are right in the midst of this cultural mix.

ROBERTSON: What can we do to change it?

BLACK: Well, mom and dad and the students have to get active. Those people who are funding it, including the federal government, giving billions of dollars to these universities, need to say enough is enough."






[A woman suddenly appears in front of the camera. We see her from behind as she rushes up to Robertson and roughly shakes his hand. She is dressed all in black. She turns around to face the camera. Blood appears to be dripping from her mouth.]

[Woman]: Not so fast, leetle ones! Eenterview not yet over.

[PR, rising]: What in the name of God … !

[Woman, taking a seat.]: Seet down, steenking American! [to JB]: Yoo too.

[Both attempt to flee. Woman pulls out a pistol.]

[Woman]: Thanks God for the conceal/carry laws in thees state! Seet down, okay? Everybody calm, okay?

[Both sit.]

[Woman, her accent suddenly normal, not to say highly educated. To PR, warmly]: I love your show.

[PR]: Madam, I believe you are disturbed and in need of help. Can we get this lady some help?

[Woman]: Let me introduce myself. I am University Diaries and I teach in the deep recesses of a dark place we call Foggy Bottom.... You know Foggy Bottom, Pat. That's where the State Department is. Remember what you said recently about the State Department? “What we need is for somebody to place a small nuke at Foggy Bottom," Robertson said between prayers and advertisements on his nationwide television program. Foggy Bottom is the location of the State Department headquarters. State Department officials said they believed the comments to be in extremely bad taste, and have lodged official complaints against Robertson for his remarks.”

[PR]: I was joking.

[UD]: It also upsets me, Pat, that you never use your own college experience as an example for your listeners of how you can go astray and then find the right path again. After all, you graduated from “one of the universities right in the midst” of this evil, as Mr. Black says (your last name, Jim, excites my lust) -- Yale, that is -- and you fathered a child out of wedlock while you were in school.

[PR]: Has somebody called the police?

[UD, examining her pistol thoughtfully]: Should’ve packed your own heat, Pat. I always do. … Anyway, this afternoon, after I finished mounting my students, sucking their blood, and explaining The Eighteenth Brumaire to them, I suddenly said to myself, “UD, old girl, you must really check in on what they’re saying over at the Christian Broadcasting Network."

[PR]: Where the fuck are the cops?

[UD]: When I heard Mr. Black characterize our courses “on vampires and the undead” as “benign,” I was concerned. Benign? Mr. Black, I do not teach benignly. I may be paid rather poorly in comparison with, say, Pat, whose dealings with Liberia’s Charles Taylor have made him unimaginably rich, but on the other hand I am free, as an American university professor, to teach as malignly as I wish…. And speaking of malign, Jim, you call for a “massive uprising” against people like me. Well, bring it on, baby. Bring it on!

PR and JB bolt from their chairs.

[UD, in pursuit, firing]: Descend, ye powers of darkness!