A Bizarre Province

...The difference now is that they are adding previously unstudied areas of literature to their coursework...

...April 1991 Dear Alumni and Friends: . . . As many alumni who have written us well know, Duke has become a reference point for a debate of national significance, a debate which I think will stand as one of the chief issues of our time...

...That is what happened back in the USSR...

...We women of the university enjoy the support of the majority of our male colleagues in using language which is either gender inclusive or gender free when referring to a generic position...

...At Duke the curriculum is not an either/or proposition as some critics have suggested...

...We are a land of immigrants and the hybrid vigor of America's peoples has always been one of this nation's greatest assets...

...Criticism of a co-ed's classwork at Goddard College got Lawrence Millman fired, though he insists that he is not "anti-female...

...This much was demonstrated by the precipitate collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...

...Cornelius Buckley and six other colleagues in the humanities refused to join the school's teachers' union, they were subjected to seven years of legal and academic harassment...

...professional responsibility, diversity as melting pot vs...

...asically, the acts committed against ID professors are no different from the repressive treatment accorded seventeenth-century neoconservative Galileo Galilei, or, from an earlier era, the libertarian Socrates...

...The institution's powerful officialdom has fallen into the hands of bunglers...

...Attached is a pertinent example of just such thoughtless use . . . and the very public acknowledgement that it was indeed thoughtless...

...FIRST RUNNER-UP April 24, 1991 Dear Sir or Madam: It seems to me that the subtext of [your Amnesty in Academia] press release is "we're finally managing to get all these liberals to be sensible...

...for, whereas academic freedom is a clearly defined doctrine, student rights are not so widely agreed upon...

...AIA is now deciding which cases of harassment to handle through the courts and which to handle through mediation teams sent by Amnesty in Academia to the offending universities...

...At Bennington College in Vermont, despite wide public outcry, Edward Hoagland was not re-appointed to his teaching position because of un-PC sentiments expressed in Esquire magazine, wherein he asserted that homosexual accouplements "can be dangerous if not physiologically provided for...

...Our informants have included full professors both liberal and conservative, graduate students and undergraduates, and naturally some rather soignee cheerleaders—when word leaked that P. J. O'Rourke was going to lead our human rights negotiating teams to the Republic's most tyrannical campuses, calls from the fair sex tripled...

...All in one has to go to a school with a venerlowed to place yellow ribbons on trees threatened with disciplinary action for all, the American university, even the Ivy able football program to find true lib-in support of our troops in the Gulf...

...In the if the old one smokes cigarettes, but not her dorm window, but the university anti-intellectual activities have been months ahead, Amnesty in Academia if he smokes marijuana or is a homo- took no action to protect her or to pre- sanctioned...

...asking questions that got him bounced League university, is in danger of be- eral values...

...The principal beneficiaries of this diversity of views are, of course, Duke students...

...As correspondence from alumni crosses my desk, I am impressed with the diversity of ideas reflected there...

...We are proud of our atmosphere of tolerance and diversity, and we think you're wrong that campuses are becoming more "sensible" if sensible means intolerant of diversity...

...And what if he were...

...Professor Sellers has endured numerous indignities and threats since he showed the temerity to question certain PC requirements delineated in a faculty job description...

...But I don't anticipate a change in the principles that underlie Duke's dual commitment to community and diversity...

...Somehow Casey's agents penetrated Communism's closed society and enlightened the Soviet citizenry to the delights shimmering beyond the Iron Curtain...

...Soon you will be entering the corporate or media sector as you begin your career...

...Another controversy revolves around the Duke English Department, which critics have portrayed as offering courses only or principally by obscure authors or literatures...

...Please let me know if you wish a list...

...Duke professors express as many different views on as many different issues as you will find at any university in the nation—if occasionally in less civil a tone than in my view is appropriate...

...Yet behind the marmoreal splendor and the uniformed guards, the party-liners have become simpletons and frotteurs...

...fairness, academic freedom vs...

...Enrollment in courses in which Shakespeare is studied has remained essentially constant over the last five years, clearly indicating that students at Duke are just as excited about the classics as ever...

...O'Rourke and we shall gladly journey even to all-male campuses (if any remain) to facilitate better understanding between university administrators and the innocent...

...At a time when many universities have attempted to place limits on speech—especially hate speech targeted at different racial, ethnic, or other groups—we have determined that the negative consequences which would come from efforts to define limits on freedom of speech would outweigh the benefits...

...In developing this coming fall's orientation program, [Vice President for Student Affairs] Bill Griffith and his colleagues are reviewing the brochure and I expect to see some minor changes in it, including a title change...

...At the University of Texas, Professor Allen Gribben was forced to resign for voting against an English Department proposal to create an Ethnic and Third World Literature concentration for M.A...

...The fact is that our English Department offerings are anything but obscure...

...FIRST PRIZE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY College of Communications April 12, 1991 School of Journalism 118 Grehan Building Ms...

...At Williams College two students who planned to broadcast on their cam16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1991 pus radio program a show whose theme was "Gay Rights, Gay Wrongs" were barred from broadcasting their show two hours before air time by campus security thugs...

...Scholarship into a students for disrupting a speech given Indian/Asian origin...

...The mediators will include myself and Mr...

...Last spring, The American Spectator founded an organization to monitor human rights violations on campus, Amnesty in Academia...

...At the University of Kentucky, a student applying for a scholarship, Miss Victoria Martin, has been rebuked for using the term "chairman" in her letter of application and accused by a cretinous "Ph.D...

...The party-liners of PC silence the independent-minded intellect, occasionally driving him to happy dispatch...

...I do not know what that means, but I defend to the death his right to say it...

...In recent months, [a number of] national media have focussed on issues associated with "political correctness," "multiculturalism," and academic freedom...

...Surprisingly, the PC tyranny is as prevalent at the less intellectually prestigious universities and at the cow colleges as it is at such lyceums as Harvard, and Rice seems to be to PC what North Korea is to Bolshevism...

...AIA now has the firing of fourteen other university professors under consideration and hopes to begin legal action against at least one major university early next year...

...If you feel your coursework [sic] has not prepared you to use gender inclusive- language in your writing, there are a number of books I would be happy to recommend," writes the "Ph.D...

...A Mississippi State University vent her continued abuse...

...Victoria Martin Lexington, KY 40506-0042 325 Linden Walk #2 (606) 257-7811 Lexington, KY 40508 Dear Victoria, On your recent scholarship application, members of the review committee noticed the inappropriate use of the term "chairman...

...intellectual aspirations of erstwhile Communist satellites, and, of course, the social and political life of the United States...

...It is a tribute to the prominence of our professors that the press avidly reports the stands they take on these matters...

...as the Soviet Union became a backwater student may request a new roommate for hanging a Confederate flag from Under the vapors of PC many other in all areas save repression...

...While much of the media coverage of Duke's role in this debate has been less informed than I would prefer, the focus on Duke, nevertheless, indicates the stature this University has achieved, and it constitutes one reason why Duke is such an exciting place for students and faculty...

...Facts are facts: the American campus is presided over by ignorant authoritarians...

...At a Midwestern small college, a professor was hauled before the dean and charged with "insensitivity" for having included the term "idiotic" among his comments on a student's essay...

...If you feel your coursework has not prepared you to use gender inclusive language in your writing, there are a number of books I would be happy to recommend...

...Once an institution's dependents grow restive, and word spreads among them of the euphoriants of freedom, the possibilities of riches, and the efficiencies of markets, left-wing tyrannies are in trouble...

...Under particularly rigorous review is a harassment case at Western Washington University, where Mr...

...Academe is an increasingly At Harvard, pre-law senior Brigit Ker- from an illegally restricted minority coming an intellectual backwater—just bizarre province...

...The world in which the present body of Duke students will be asked to provide leadership will be smaller than the world of today...

...and in Washington today among the cognoscenti it is whispered that during the 1980s Bill Casey's CIA clandestinely introduced into the USSR millions of pieces of information in dozens of forms about the free society, democracy, capitalism, The West...

...What progressives wax indignant at when spotted on the campus of Bob Jones University has been occurring at Yale and Oberlin with impunity...

...E vidence accumulates that in our time those institutions that demand slavish conformity to a party line rot from within, perhaps leaving, at least temporarily, an impressive facade...

...This is simply not true at Duke, and indeed, the evidence is often found in these very articles, which frequently cite Duke professors and students stating their opinions on all sides of these issues, as is consistent with the principle of openness that undergirds academic freedom...

...We here at Ferrum College have recently passed sexual and racial harassment policies and those policies are, to the best of my knowledge, enforced...

...18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1991...

...is editor-in-chief of The American Spectator...

...In time, no matter how powerful or even brutal the institution appears, it becomes the domain of oafs and impostors, incapable either of continuing their grafting or of launching an efficacious coup against a restless but unarmed citizenry...

...Could not our CIA perform the same wholesome service at America's universities...

...No bones were broken...

...Several such articles have implied that Duke . . . imposes constraints on the freedom of students and professors to speak out on controversial issues...

...Can the fall of PC and American higher education be far off...

...The controversy generated by that brochure probably derived principally from its title, Duke's Vision...

...The data that AIA has now collected clearly demonstrate that American higher education, at least in the humanities and among university administrators, has lost touch with the intellectual life of Western Europe, the R. Emmett 73'rrell, Jr...

...Far from advocating any particular position on these subjects, the University acts as a forum to promote inquiry into them...

...Venerated works of intellect are of higher learning are perfumed totaligo down hard...

...students—obviously PC's fabled desideratum, "diversity," does not include disagreement...

...At the Uni- been imposed upon young men and let us hear of the horrors nonconformcoed, Miss Debbie Goswani, when in- versity of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Mary women seeking only the kind of liberal ist professors and students are exposed terviewed for a federally funded Truman Holland innocently entered a seminar arts education once available to the to this semester...

...Hundreds of informants have called the AIA hotline (1-800-7836707) to notify us of human rights abuses and acts of Know-Nothingism at some of the Republic's greatest universities...

...And, of course, it is especially inappropriate to address a woman as "chairman" unless she has specifically requested such a limiting language...

...Recently, controversy has arisen in regard to a brochure issued by the Office of Residential Life called Duke's Vision...

...that includes making sure whether you are addressing a letter of application to a female or a male professor...

...Unfortunately, it has been characterized by some in the press as an attempt to impose a radical political doctrine on students...

...Among the weird ques- the PC Thought Patrollers for the rest denied students while condoms are tarianisms...

...Best regards, S. Scott Whitlow, Ph.D...

...Could it be that University, where students were not al- hauled before university tribunals and versy and financial deprivation...

...The need for understanding and appreciating the contributions of other cultures and languages as America competes in an increasingly global marketplace will require that tomorrow's leaders bring a sensitivity and respect for difference to their tasks that is all too often lacking in our society...

...of communications in an otherwise unreadable letter (see box for the full text of this and other prize-winning communiques from the AIA archives...

...And at North Carolina's forced upon them under the idiotic no- President Joseph Johnson, in a splenmarital sex...

...The feminist flapdoodle has will monitor the repression, so please sexual...

...Another case under serious consideration is the mistreatment of James Sellers, a professor of ethics at Rice University...

...Although I and my newspaper staff—to whom your press release was addressed—are not sympathetic to your political leanings, we would, of course, make advertising space available to you at the regular display rates, which are listed below: Full tabloid page $85.00 1/2 " " $50.00 1/4 " $30.00 1/8 " $20.00 —Lana A. Whited Assistant Professor of English Ferrum College Ferrum, Virginia THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1991 17 At Penn State University's dorms, a rigan suffered threats and indignities group meeting...

...The intimidation of students by local PC thought patrols and the occasional suspensions and expulsions of students who run afoul of PC prejudices have been more frequent than the abuse suffered by professors—though they are more problematic...

...Miss Goswani is of independent student publication, the als prevent AIDS...

...at the College of Communications of "making women invisible through thoughtless use of language...

...There, too, you will find there are expectations that women not be made invisible through thoughtless use of language...

...Our faculty, 1500 strong, can and do take stands on these issues, in and out of the classroom...

...We at the School of Journalism particularly expect our News/Editorial majors to check ALL their facts...

...Our students are studying both the best in traditional literature and the best in emerging areas of scholarship such as African-American literature, ethnic studies, women's studies, and others...

...This document was written principally by a faculty member in the Divinity School as a catalyst for discussion between faculty and students at freshman orientation...

...Tim Osterholm was "forced" to resign from the university's Veterans Outreach Center because he rebuffed attempts to involve the Center in such uninviting programs as those sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance...

...let us know if anyone is forcing you to be sensitive to cultural, racial, or gender-based differences...

...continued on page 18) DOUBLESPEAK HONORABLE MENTION Duke University Durham North Carolina 27706 Office of the President H. Keith H. Brodie, M.D...

...Sincerely, H. Keith H. Brodie, M.D...

...At Grambling University, tions were: "What are your views on pre- of the seminar...

...Scholarship, was asked questions that where she was encouraged to air her in- young John E Kennedy and Richard And do not think that all institutions if asked by an anti-PC interviewer would dependent views, only to be targeted by Nixon...

...Finally, at the University of San Francisco, when the Rev...

...We want to be helpful...

...Would you consider mar- Wake Forest University, the editor of an tion that condoms used by heterosexu- did defense of free speech, disciplined rying a white man...

...diversity as enrichment...

...Valid points can be made on all sides of these issues: excellence vs...

...And back to Rice Wake Forest Critic, is being repeatedly wide range of topics is cause for contro- by a visiting professor...