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Thursday, December 09, 2004
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TIME FOR A MAKEOVER, BLUESTERS!
The recent performance of Professor Donald Lazere on radio station BUR is only the latest sign that America's academics cannot defend themselves at all against reasoned conservative voices who want to talk about the obvious and problematic imbalance of political positions and affiliations within the university. Presented with the statistics we have all seen about overwhelming bluesterism in the university, challenged to discuss the imbalance in a detailed and dispassionate way, Lazere begins calmly (not to say soporifically) enough, but all too soon starts to squawk -- COULTER! LIMBAUGH! SIMPLE-MINDED RIGHTWING MEDIA! SIMPLE-MINDED STUDENTS! SIMPLE-MINDED CONSERVATIVES! TOO COMPLEX AN ISSUE FOR ANYONE ON THE RIGHT TO UNDERSTAND! TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND IT! Professor Lazere then advises that we correct our understandings of the situation by studying the thought of Al Franken. Lazere complains that American college students don't care about this debate anyway, because they're grade-grubbing vocational dummies who get through college without becoming educated in any serious sense. He fails to explain why it is that American colleges - dominated for decades by requirements-hating lefties - are so constituted as to allow this non-education to occur. Lazere concludes by rejecting calls for balance in the academy because after all the humanities have always been a sort of fox-hole into which brave dissenters from evil corporate hegemony have been able to crawl... In subsequent posts, UD will suggest ways in which the academy can begin to defend itself. For now, she will restrict herself to one piece of advice: Anyone But Lazere. |