← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Robbie
Thread ID: 14255 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2004-06-18
2004-06-18 21:48 | User Profile
English For Lesbians, Feminists, Queers, And Communists
Mike S. Adams, townhall.com, Jun. 3
Recently, I wrote an article called ââ¬ÅSummer Reading,ââ¬Â which was intended to motivate my readers to take some time to read classic literature over the summer. While mostly apolitical, it did close with the following line, which was deemed offensive by one of my readers: ââ¬Å(Go out and) pick up a great work of classic literature and enjoy the reading. You know, like the kind they used to assign in college when English professors taught English instead of homosexuality and feminism.ââ¬Â
The offended reader, from Ithaca, New York, called my above assertion ââ¬Åsexist, heterosexist, and gratuitous.ââ¬Â So, naturally, I apologized. No, Iââ¬â¢m just kidding. Instead of apologizing, I decided to search the webpage of the nearest university English department to see what I could find. Naturally, I went looking first on Cornell.edu. Here is a summary of what I found out about the English faculty at Cornell University:
James Eli is an expert in gender and sexuality.
Frederic Bogel is an expert in critical (that means Marxist) theory.
Mary Pat Brady is an expert in U.S. Latino and Latina literatures and cultures, cultural studies, and American multi-ethnic literatures.
Laura Brown is an expert in feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, and cultural critique.
Cynthia Chase is an expert in womenââ¬â¢s literature.
Eric Cheyfitz is an expert in federal Indian law.
Barbara Correll is an expert in gender, cultural studies, lesbian, bisexual, and gay literary studies.
Elizabeth DeLoughrey is an expert in feminist theory and womenââ¬â¢s writing.
Laura Donaldson is an expert in American Indian literature and culture, American Indian women, gender, race and law.
Alice Fulton is an expert in critical (that means Marxist) writing, postmodernism, and feminist theory.
Andrew Galloway is an expert in the sociology of knowledge, and visions of women and womenââ¬â¢s writings.
Ellis Hanson is an expert in lesbian and gay studies, and psychoanalysis.
Molly Hite is an expert in feminist criticism and theory, and postmodernism.
Mary Jacobus is an expert in feminist literary criticism and theory, and womenââ¬â¢s writing.
Phyllis Janowitz is an expert in women and literature.
Biodun Jeyifo is an expert in African and Caribbean Anglophone literatures, comparative African and Afro-American critical thought, Marxist literary and cultural theory, and twentieth-century revolutionary social philosophy and literature.
Carol Kaske is an expert in Middle Ages and Renaissance, and cultural history of these periods (especially gender).
Douglas Mao (not to be confused with Chairman Mao) is an expert in gay, lesbian, and bisexual studies.
Kenneth McClane is an expert in African American literature.
Kate McCullough is an expert in womenââ¬â¢s literature, feminist literary criticism and theory, and lesbian/queer theory.
Dorothy Mermin is an expert in womenââ¬â¢s poetry.
Satya Mohanty is an expert in critical (that means Marxist) theory.
Timothy Murray is an expert in cultural studies as well as lesbian, bisexual, and gay literary studies.
Mash Raskolnikov is an expert in feminist and queer studies.
Shirley Samuels is an expert in feminist criticism.
Paul Sawyer is an expert in Marxian and feminist approaches and the ways questions of politics and ideology can be related to close local readings.
Hortense Spillers is an expert in the study of aspects of African American and American literature, feminist, Marxist, and more general theories of contemporary criticism.
Shelly Wong is an expert in Asian American, African American, and ethnic literatures as well as Asian Canadian literature and, finally, cultural studies.
William Jefferson Clinton recently gave the commencement address for the Cornell University graduating class of 2004. He is an expert on college interns with thong underwear.
Mike Adams ([url]www.DrAdams.org[/url]) is a professor of Elderly Asian Lesbian Criminology. Just kidding. He is actually the author of ââ¬ÅWelcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel.ââ¬Â Signed copies of his book can be ordered on his website.
From: Brian
It is creepy that this many feminist and Marxist are on the payroll. The worst aspect of college is paying the salaries of these feminists. I checked out the Cornell webpage and looked at the womens studies department only to relize that there are more feminist teaching in the English department than in the feminist studies department! You might as well call an English degree from Cornell a degree in women's studies.
Here are some good websites to explore for the college bound.
[url]http://studentsreview.com/[/url] A must visit. This webpage has all sorts of data that a person could use. It contains many reviews of each college by students. Some can be funny. Do a search on the University of Virginia and read about the the racial divisions that exsist at this school. Vanderbilt is a fun read as well. One gets the impression that the South will never change its ways when you look up some of the southern colleges. Another poster said that getting into Antioch College(a Marxist school) was as easy as smoking pot with the faculty.
NoIndoctrination.org This site lets you read all sorts of reviews on leftist professors. Some of the professors use fascist tatics to suppress non-believers of liberalism.
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From: John P. M.
Well this article is telling; we really do live in an age gone mad!
I have one question, where does one obtain employment with a BA majoring in "Queer Communist Afrocentric" English Lit? Waiter in a coffee shop, welfare recipient, "journalist", or speech writer for Democratic office holders? Just wondering!
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From: joe rorke
Outrageous! I couldn't believe it when I read it! All right, I admit it, I'm a senior citizen. But this is not acceptable. Whatever happened to America? What are they teaching our young people? Oh, my God, what a shame! Nothing good can come of this, I assure you. They can play multiculturalism all they want to but in the end this house of cards is going to come tumbling down and the bodies will be lying all over the place. This is an education? Well, yes, it is. But not the kind I would want to lay on the children of our land.
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From: Bob
The real problem here is a lack of standards. What qualifies a person to be a Feminist professor? Or a "queer theorist?" How about "Black Studies?" I've read books on ALL these issues and in every single one, they show such a resounding ignorance and stupidity about human history and sociology that it is almost mind-boggling! Why do they get away with it? Because they can! All you have to do is be black to be a professor in Black Studies. All you have to be is gay to do gay studies. All you have to do is be born with a vagina to do the feminism thing.
This is not intelligent debate or criticism, it is, for the most part, intellectual fraud. Paranoid, ignorant, and openly hostile to heterosexual white males. It's WRONG. I have never once heard any gay people support this crap. Feminism is irrelevent today because women already have made it here. It's all fading 60's hippy supposed-to-be-relevent-but-ain't babble. Nobody cares anymore.
Western European males have flown spacecraft out of this solar system while most of the rest of the world can't even keep the electricity on. So these "studies" programs are just jealousy and inferiority being paraded as real history.
The white people who support this kind of garbage are like that beautiful girl in high school who is always telling everyone who'll listen that's she's ugly--she knows it's not true, but she rails against herself because she is in the comfortable position of being beautifful.
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From: Matt
I'm intimately familiar with the sort of thing they try to shove down your throats. I had an English teacher accuse me of "Western positivism"...when I pointed out to her that I was positive about Western culture because for practical purposes it is not only more relevant to me but superior to other cultures, the veins in her head almost exploded.
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From: Girl American
These feminists are all so in the way, you can't even study another subject. They are so annoying if you are trying to get a real EDUCATION, something they have no interest in providing to young folks.
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From: spartacus
Ellis Hanson is also a "specialist" in pedophilia (he thinks it's okay for other people, but claims not to be interested in its practice himself) and teaches its virtues using videos and class discussion. Why do Cornell alumni keep giving money to this university? This means the madness has been going on for many years, I guess.
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From: Casey Crews
To Bob,
"Western European males have flown spacecraft out of this solar system while most of the rest of the world can't even keep the electricity on."
Friend, now that was FUNNY! So true.
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From: Sonja G
While the situation is indeed bad at Cornell, it is not as bad as this article makes it appear.
First, most of the above professors have interests that are not on the list. For example, Timothy Murray's first listed interest is English and French Renaissance studies. I suspect some (perhaps most) of these professors actually did their PhD dissertation in a "real" subject, and to become more politically correct have dabbled a little in feminist/ homosexual/ minority/ marxist studies.
Second, there are 23 active professors who are not on the list. Needless to say, none of the omitted professors have funky specialties.
I think this kind of selective reporting is a problem, regardless of which side it is coming from. What if some reader of the editorial thought the list to be all inclusive and started spouting at a friend, only to look like a fool later?
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From: So What
"Sonja G" - I believe the point of the article was to show the kooks. The mainstream media would never, ever, bring attention to the freakshow that American Colleges have become. Our side should forget about fairness. The other side, the white hating evil people that run the media and government never play fair. Never. So why extend any courtesy at all? The Hell with "their side" of things. We're pummeled with it 24/7 on the idiot tube, magazines, and by what passes for newspapers in this day and age.
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[url]http://www.amren.com/news/news04/06/03/cornellcourses.html[/url]
2004-06-21 00:30 | User Profile
There are some interesting links nested in you post, worth reading -thanks.
Our college system is crumbling with pretentious and unscholarly professors. Soon it may be replaced entirely by trade schools like ITT and DeVry. I have a friend that went to Devry and is now making six figures. I have another friend who got a degree in Sociology and she is now a secretary for a dentist. It is becoming more clear that a bachelors isn't worth much ; a Master's degree is needed for a grad to be marketable. That's what happens when a society is stupid enough to believe that everybody has a "right" to attend college. Other than the sciences most degrees are worth less than a certification from a good tech school.
If anyone is interested in this subject a good resource is Richard Mitchell's archive. This guy started documenting sloppy scholarship and pretentious language in higher education in the 1970's. Reading his old newsletters gave me some ammunition when I went to college. Most professors avoid dissent by using language that precludes objections, once you're on to their tricks they are easy to refute. I would recommend anyone going to college read a few of the newsletters of the underground grammerian: [url]http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/index.html[/url]
2004-06-21 02:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=LlenLleawc]There are some interesting links nested in you post, worth reading -thanks.
Our college system is crumbling with pretentious and unscholarly professors. Soon it may be replaced entirely by trade schools like ITT and DeVry. I have a friend that went to Devry and is now making six figures. I have another friend who got a degree in Sociology and she is now a secretary for a dentist. It is becoming more clear that a bachelors isn't worth much ; a Master's degree is needed for a grad to be marketable. That's what happens when a society is stupid enough to believe that everybody has a "right" to attend college. Other than the sciences most degrees are worth less than a certification from a good tech school.[/QUOTE]
The impulse to place more value on trade schools and the like is understandable given the "Victim Studies" orientation of our universities, but at the same time it's a sad and misguided reaction. Modern American civilization is plagued by the idea that higher education is useful only for "making six figures." The answer isn't emphasis on the trades and sciences, but the abolition of "feminism" in the academy, and the restoration of the serious study of the West, and a true commitment to the life of the mind. A lot of universities have phased out the study of languages like Old Icelandic, for example, because it is perceived as "politically incorrect," "elitist," and what have you.
2004-06-21 02:23 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar- you make a good point, if America's universities were replaced by trade and technical schools it would be much harder to get a real "renaisance man" education, the kind of wide ranging scholasticism that western philosophy is based on.
But our universities are shooting themselves in the foot by dumbing down the curriculum so everyone can get a degree. I don't see how the whole university system can avoid crumbling. Maybe their is some hope that the home school movement will provide a forum for the life of the mind you refer to. But the university system is beyond repair in my opinion.
2004-06-21 05:01 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar,
Great Post you are most Right!
[QUOTE=PaleoconAvatar]The impulse to place more value on trade schools and the like is understandable given the "Victim Studies" orientation of our universities, but at the same time it's a sad and misguided reaction. Modern American civilization is plagued by the idea that higher education is useful only for "making six figures." The answer isn't emphasis on the trades and sciences, but the abolition of "feminism" in the academy, and the restoration of the serious study of the West, and a true commitment to the life of the mind. A lot of universities have phased out the study of languages like Old Icelandic, for example, because it is perceived as "politically incorrect," "elitist," and what have you.[/QUOTE]
2004-06-21 09:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=LlenLleawc]PaleoconAvatar- you make a good point, if America's universities were replaced by trade and technical schools it would be much harder to get a real "renaisance man" education, the kind of wide ranging scholasticism that western philosophy is based on.
But our universities are shooting themselves in the foot by dumbing down the curriculum so everyone can get a degree. I don't see how the whole university system can avoid crumbling. Maybe their is some hope that the home school movement will provide a forum for the life of the mind you refer to. But the university system is beyond repair in my opinion.[/QUOTE]
You are absolutely correct.
2004-06-23 09:09 | User Profile
Feminism wasn't responsible for Abu Ghraib, though, and the political beheadings to cover up torture. That is right-wing American Vietnam war Reaganism plus Bushes, the CIA, and anti-Christian way of being calling itself God's plan. .
Overconcern with English grammar impedes clear thought and communication, just like overconcern with God. They actually go together. (Response to the "Underground grammarian" -- "WARNING - Rape of the Mother Tongue WILL BE PUNISHED" - quote from site.) There are studies to back this up, but here it's based mostly on personal experience. What one needs is a sense of logical syntax -- a clear, simple-as-possible subject term (not bundled with 'and' + political adjucts to emotionally loaded subjects like torture -- "Torture, South Korean Evangelical Christians and Clinton", for instance, which one might run across at FReeRepube sites and Townhall), followed by a factual predicate -- if the attempt is to persuade by reason, not by bombast or trickery -- is all you need for a sentence, and you don't need but one sentence to go on a long time, maybe forever. * (Cf,. the idealist philosophy of F.H. Bradley, according to which "The Absolute" is the subject of every sentence, with every truth a predicate.)
Grammar is often just another form of ultimate PC control by those lacking content. The maxim "if you can't play, you can at least look good" used by our basketball coach to enforce drill skill and appearance, if applied to sentence construction, doesn't reverse well ("if you look good, you have something to say.") They tried to use grammar to stifle Vietnam war protests on campus, but I wouldn't let 'em. When it comes to politics, grammar shammer.