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(Rate Your Students)
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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)

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

REDNECK WOMAN DIARIES


Truly faithful readers of UD (or readers who just found me and are poring over earlier entries) know that among the recurrent features of University Diaries are:

"Teaching Today"

"Dumb Shit Artists Say"

the "Janice Sidley"saga

and the proceedings of the "Undergraduate Oligarchs Consortium".

Plus - as if that weren’t enough - there’s REDNECK WOMAN DIARIES (the earliest RWD entry is 6/18/04), an occasional low-class counterpoint to high-class University Diaries, in which UD chronicles the NASCAR-crazed ways of people who, er, tend not to be university professors.

The news story on which today’s Redneck Woman Diaries is based contains elements of both university and redneck life.




It concerns the expert testimony, at a high-profile trial, of Professor Curtis W. Wood, Jr., a longtime faculty member in the history department at Western Carolina University. Professor Wood’s specialty is the history of the migration of Scotch and Irish people in the south and west of the United States. (Think Thomas Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom. George Gudger in Let us Now Praise Famous Men.)

Now, it is Professor Wood’s considered opinion that accused abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph was unavailable to the police for five years after he was seen speeding from a burning clinic in Alabama not because he was, like, running away, but because of his culture:



' BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Eric Rudolph's attorneys have an explanation for his nearly 5 1/2 years on the lam after an Alabama abortion clinic bombing:

His culture made him do it.

The defense has asked a court to allow the testimony of a university professor who contends that Rudolph's years as a fugitive are consistent with the culture of western North Carolina, where the serial-bombing suspect spent much of his life.

The question of why Rudolph was a fugitive for so long is likely to be key to his upcoming death penalty trial, because the government argues that his years on the run are a sign of guilt.

In a document filed Friday, the defense said that jurors in Rudolph's upcoming trial should be allowed to hear from Western Carolina University history professor Curtis W. Wood.

The professor would say that “Rudolph's retreat to the wilderness in the face of being sought by federal law enforcement is consistent with the cultural values, principles and lifestyles of some of those in the region,” according to the defense.

The subculture of the area includes “strong community ties coupled with an independent spirit; living off the land; preservation of individual privacy and freedom; and a persistent mistrust and suspicion of government,” according to an earlier defense document.

A judge has said he would rule on the issue without a hearing.

Rudolph vanished after a man driving his pickup truck was seen in Birmingham near the scene of a deadly abortion clinic bombing in January 1998. He was captured in May 2003 in Murphy, N.C.
'





People think all-justifying cultural relativism is a creature of the left (“Female genital mutilation is, well, just their way…”), but here you got it smack dab on the right. Mr. Rudolph didn’t bother putting in a call to the police for five years, even though his picture was plastered in every post office in America? Honey, these folk don’t have no truck with federal officials! Don’t mean he’s guilty! Just means he’s from Carolina.