Links
Archives
Monday, November 13, 2006
|
UD Very Seldom Singles Out... ...university heroes. She is doing so today. His name is Professor Robert L. Dietle, and he teaches history at Western Kentucky University.  A chronicler of modern European thought, Professor Dietle has fought and fought to keep his benighted school from throwing much of its money, and its students' money, into football, rather than into desperately needed academics. Dietle and most of the rest of the faculty voted against taking one of the most impoverished and academically backward schools in the state to expensive, corrupt, and often disastrous Division I-A status; but pretty much everyone else on campus thought it was a hell of an idea, so it's going to happen. It's bad enough that WKU has done this surpassingly stupid thing to itself. Far worse is the way its trustees told dissenting voices at the discussion before the vote on the issue to shut up, and then indeed simply shut them up, arbitrarily closing off debate. The same trustees are now attacking Dietle in the press as the devil incarnate. And of course I guess he would be, devoted as he is to intellect rather than games... UD is always a little shocked -- even though she knows how anti-intellectual this country is -- when violent anti-intellectuality breaks out among university presidents and trustees. She's seen it at the University of Colorado and she's seen it at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas... she's seen it at lots of universities. But she's still amazed. These are our universities. Few faculty have the heart to sit in the same room as campus fuckwits and watch them destroy the life of the mind. Dietle was willing to do so, even though he must have known it was a lost cause. For this, UD salutes him most admiringly. |