Newsgroups: alt.activism.d
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: The Education of Alan Gribben
Message-ID: <JMC.93Jan4001527@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 4 Jan 93 00:15:27
Lines: 712

Measure has previously reported (August 1990) on the ordeal of Alan
Gribben in the Department of English at the University of Texas at
Austin. Drawing on his own experiences and those of other faculty
members who dared to question politiciz ed curriculums and became
victims of the political purge now underway on America n campuses,
Professor Gribben reflects upon the lessons to be gleaned from their
persecution.  Alan Gribben currently teaches at a university in the
South.  ____________________________________________________________

                  THE EDUCATION OF ALAN GRIBBEN

Today I and a growing number of faculty, students, alumni, and
taxpayers are recognizing that we are confronted by probably the
first widespread academic moveme nt in United States history to be so
fearful that its ulterior goals of division -- hate-mongering, sexual
politics, and cultural disorientation -- might somehow be discovered
and exposed that it denies its very existence and hides its netw ork
and operations. This concern, along with a lust for a monopoly of
power in academic circles, makes these people ruthlessly vicious in
disagreements that they interpret as ideological.

I know this first-hand, because I believe that I was ostracized in
such a systematic and cruel manner that I was eventually compelled to
leave a tenured full professorship in English at the University of
Texas (UT) at Austin, where I had taught American literature and
composition for seventeen years.

Thanks to a recent article about my ordeal written by Peter Collier in
a new journal called Heterodoxy, the events that unraveled for me
after what would now be termed a "politically incorrect" departmental
vote in 1987 have received national publicity and have given me more
mail to answer than I am prepared for. Mr. Collier had to cajole me
into those interviews, because every such account seems to bring with
it a fresh series of retaliating reprisals from my former colleagues
or their allies.

But I am a literary historian. These things happened, and they deserve
to be on the record. My opponents, by contrast, seem to be very
anti-historical and have tried to dismiss my claims of shunning, to
discredit my opinions, and to rewrite the chronology of my situation.

Our version of the past few years is this: A few English professors
across the country have broken ranks to notify the students and the
public of their colleagues' abdication of the academic responsibility
of ensuring curricular balance and disciplinary integrity.

Our opponents' version differs tremendously; according to them, a few
reactionary racists, sexists, and homophobes have unfortunately
survived the 1960s and nee d to be rooted out from the campus
faculties. Now, which version is more plausible? That is the question
the press and the public must soon decide.

The main program of the academic dogmatists revolves around what could
be termed the five "D's":

     1. Deny--the existence of any radical "Politically Correct"
presence on cam pus. Deny the possibility of "facts," "proof," and
objective "truth."

     2. Discredit -- people of good will who want to make the present
structure work fairly and effectively. Isolate each resister and
attack his/her character.

     3. Disinform -- allege "misrepresentation" at every juncture.

     4. Divide -- students and faculty, faculty and citizens, blacks
and whites, Hispanics and Anglos, women and men.

     5. Discard -- truth, collegiality, standards.

Unfortunately, many of us are just beginning to understand exactly
what we are opposing here. In fact, I only read the journal Radical
Teacher and books like Schooling in Capitalist America and Pedagogy
of the Oppressed after my departmental opponents referred to them as
influences in this academic revolution.

For all their posturing, these Academic Leftists -- who often coyly
say, "Don't call me a Marxist; just say that I employ foundational
Marxist methodology" -- can always step back into mainstream America
tomorrow, leaving behind their "oppositional" publications, which
exist only to validate the politics of English and American Studies
professors and their graduate students. Like the hippies who played
at poverty and anti-establishment dress, these Marxists sense that
their trendy intellectual poses can be repackaged or scrapped at any
time -- here, then , is a low-risk splurge with lots of enrichment
potential in the present situation.

Culling common experiences from Texas and across the nation, I can
outline a few techniques and tactics that seem to be in use:

     1. "Who's he?" (Also known as "You're Invisible"). In my case,
four years of watching everyone be nice to others in the faculty
mailroom.

     2. "The Handler." -- Possibly a national tactic, and employed
extensively at UT. Someone takes your psychological temperature and
checks your pulse on a regular basis, assuring you of his or her
sympathy, but actually runs with the persecuting crowd.

     3. "You're okay -- he's not." A revolving game. Intimidates the
others, who then worry that the same fate right befall them.

     4. "Hey, I feel sexually harassed. "Innocent professors have been
smeared a t universities by what are in reality political charges to
discredit resisters o f PC dogma.

     5. "Welcome to Coventry." Committee assignments, graduate
courses, University grants mysteriously vanish. Recommendations and
other collegial courtesies also diminish. I used to pass the time at
department meetings by counting the seats between me and anyone else,
no matter where I sat. The minimum was nine empty chairs on either
side; two rows, vertically.

     6. Coercion by consensus at departmental meetings. Every vote on
every deci sion was voted and re-voted until unanimous or
near-unanimous. Then we were reminded at the end of each meeting:
"Remember, we all think alike on this matter. There is no
disagreement, no division."

     7. "We face a committed enemy." Usually me, later someone else,
often a dean or a provost. Always this was supposedly the person who
was endeavoring to ruin the "progressive" record of the department --
a reactionary, a "conservative."  We must overcome his strategies.
(Select a target and demonize him.)

In 1988 Herbert London and Stephen Balch visited campuses, talking
about a new organization they were founding -- the National
Association of Scholars. Psychology professor Joseph Horn was
present. A brave man of resolve, he was later smeared in Z magazine
by a false account of his professional research.

I remember speaking from personal experience at the meeting, saying
that it was too late to reintroduce moderation and reason into the
humanities. Slogans and demagogues were already in ascendancy. I
hesitated, not wanting to be labeled a " conservative." (I knew the
price of being viewed as a conservative in a university English
department. After all, I had attended graduate school at UC Berkeley
during the 1960s.)

But I finally joined the NAS after a year of unprovoked departmental
ostracism.  My 1987 vote against an Ethnic and Third World Literature
concentration for the MD degree in English (I simultaneously voted for
a Ph D specialization in the same subject), which passed at a meeting
of the English graduate faculty by a margin of 41- 1, brought upon me
an immediate and permanent banishment from the life of my department.
In other words, I could not even voice an opinion that our beginning
English graduate students should read a balance of classic as well as
recent American and British literature.

In December 1988 I raised the identical 1987 motion in another meeting
of the same English graduate faculty in order to make an appeal to my
colleagues. I recounted my life events and my beliefs, and asked for
respect and tolerance. Only one person indicated some understanding,
to my amazement. At a holiday buffet following that meeting I was
completely shunned.

I had kept thinking that my colleagues would see that this was a case
of mistaken identity. Now it began to remind me of a Salem witch hunt
or a Stalinist-style purge to keep the party members in line.

The actuality is this: I don't have a racist bone in my body, however
you wantt o define that ugly term. And I have advocated the promotion
and retention of qualified women since long before it became "PC" to
do so -- and far in advance of a number of my suddenly converted and
finger-pointing former colleagues.

I had a few additional brushes with "PC." One year I wrote to the
recruitment chair, suggesting that the routine elimination of most
white male applicants was unconscionable and potentially actionable.
I also published a letter in 1989 defending our dean's decision to
terminate one part of the search process because of a lack of
pedagogical balance. (Consequently, I was falsely accused of being a
"sexist.")

In June 1990, feeling that I had little more to lose in my department,
I publicly opposed the redesigning of a University-required
first-year Rhetoric and Compo sition Course, English 306, intended for
students who did not score well on an entrance examination of grammar
usage and composition skills. The proponents of the course had the
approval of the dean but had not submitted the course through normal
University channels for debate. Other irregularities were noticeable:
scheduled to be offered in the Fall Semester of 1990, the course did
not yet have a syllabus ready for inspection; its principal textbook
was a radical social scie nces reader, Paula Rothenberg's Racism and
Sexism: An Integrated Study; the emphasis of the course was no longer
on writing skills and student expression but on "differences" in race,
class, and gender. Three other English professors joined me in
protesting the politicization of this required course, and all of us
suffered assaults on our professional reputations. Eventually other
UT faculty and a dministrators indicated their displeasure with the
planned changes in E 306, and the revised course was scrapped. Though
costly to us dissenters, it was a remarkable victory on behalf of the
students' actual needs.

I began to be the recipient of late night "calls of conscience" (as my
wife Irene used to term them)--colleagues telephoning to see how I
was, offer apologies f or their behavior, recommend that I leave.
Their personal circumstances frequently did not permit public support
for my position, but I found myself admiring t em for their tenacity
in staying on there, at whatever risk.

As the press requested interviews and quoted me more and more, people
around the campus and the city began to shrink from me. I sounded,
through the megaphone of the newspapers, irrational to be so at odds
with a prevailing faction in my department. How could I communicate
with a vast number--thousands--of people who h ad received an
erroneous impression of me as uncompromising and "controversial"
through the print media, which sells newspapers mainly by reporting
conflict? I didn't have the time or money to write a book. I couldn't
afford to buy a half hour of TV for an in-depth interview to defend
my character.

I just had to wait and hope.

And then the nightmare of my opponents commenced. They were named by a
label from  one of the Left's own Berkeley conferences -- "Politically
Correct." The general public took notice now, but it was too late for
me to stay.

Let me assure you, many Texas people wanted me to remain, and I made
the decision to leave very reluctantly. But no one would make the
kinds of arrangements that could enable a dissident to stay on with
dignity:

     -- a permanent academic office away from the PC crowd and its
graduate-student enforcers;

     -- separate mail drop facilities;

     -- a non-departmental budget salary line;

     -- membership on University committees and Liberal Arts committees;

     -- Faculty Senate eligibility outside the English Department
voting mechanisms;

     -- access to secretarial support beyond the chairman's jurisdiction.

I needed an academically legal divorce, in other words.

But let's turn the tables for a minute, and look at the English department that
harasses its dissidents.

     1. The academic unit falls into the hands of political radicals
-- hard-core true believers--a combination of "cultural studies"
exponents, radical feminists, Marxists, Third World studies
advocates, and radical literary theorists.

     2. Middle faculty -- good liberals -- look the other way,
intimidated, not really interested in sacrificing much (if anything)
to uphold basic educational principles. Most academics are careerists
who just want salary raises and hope to be left alone. They are
relieved that the political pack has targeted someone else. They want
to please those who seem to be dominating developments.

     3. The resisters soon are mostly gone, broken, or converted.

What happens in this situation when someone like me reveals to the
press his shabby, despicable treatment? The "middle" faction begins
to identify with those who control the department, and to repudiate
the person who has refused to pretend that he elected to leave
voluntarily. It is a sad but understandable reaction - - one that I
might have shared myself only a few years ago. The profession as a
whole worries about the irresponsible image it is conveying to the
public (shades of Serpico). A whistleblower takes on the aspect of a
common enemy.

Sometimes I tried to imagine the academic world from my opponents'
point of view , attempting to see why they needed to be so ruthless,
but it was always hard for me to grasp. They already had so much.

The spoils system becomes another weapon in a purge -- rumor has it
that my former department divided up my salary among the remaining
faculty. If that is true, then it was another way to take the edge off
my departure. The chair reportedly reassigned my office to one of my
long-time friends.

There was no farewell reception from the department I had served so
long--merely a request from the chair's office that if possible I
vacate my office early. However, a new dean gave Irene and me a
farewell sendoff at his house, with drinks and food and hugs and well
wishes and speeches. And then it was over. Suddenly we were ex-
Texans.

But my ties with Texas didn't stop there, and neither did the campaign
against me. We had grieved over each loss of decades-old friendships,
but we were always surprised by additional betrayals. A few weeks
after I left Austin, the Parlin Hall office door of a senior UT
English professor displayed a cartoon caricaturing Columbus' arrival
in the New World, depicting the explorer in the act of enslaving a
Native American woman. A photograph of my face was pasted over
Columbus'.  The unfairness (and irrelevance) of that smear in
comparison with my real-life actions and attitudes is so immense as to
be shocking. But the deterioration of that friendship to juvenile
nastiness turned out to be only a harbinger of what was to come.
Gradually I have realized that the Academic Left, aided by what I call
the New Age Left, has resolved that it simply must discredit me,
whatever the cost to truth and academic integrity.

Here are some of the fictions employed by my detractors:

     1. "Look, he's mentally deranged."

     -- The Austin American-Statesman received a dozen angry letters
from my colleagues, several mentioning my "well known" mental
illness, after publishing a halfway sympathetic story reporting my
departure.

     -- A Daily Texan editorial invited people to one of my public
lectures by repeating the charge that I am a victim of "paranoid
delusions."

     -- My former chairman, appearing on British television, referred pityingly
to the fantasies behind my "take-home reality."

     -- My former chairman also assured the Chicago Tribune that I was indeed a
victim of "PC" -- that is, "personal confusion."

     -- In a newspaper interview a former colleague characterized my
departmental behavior as that of "Captain Queeg rolling his steel
balls" (after I had endured four years of almost total isolation!)

     2. "Actually, nothing really happened to him."

     -- One English professor from UT, debating Dinesh D'Souza in
front of a large audience at Southwestern University, unexpectedly
launched into a personal attack on me, saying among other things that
I had been "well-paid." But that contention, for example, glosses
over the punitive 1 1/2% total salary raise recommended for two of my
most productive (and final) years at UT. Fortunately I was present
(unknown to the debater) to appeal from the floor to the moderator not
to allow the use of that public forum for further character
assassination.

     3. "He's just jumping on this anti-Political Correctness
bandwagon that the right-wing American press has started rolling."

     -- My ostracism began in 1987, not 1990, and not as a result of
my opposition to English 306. In spite of my ill treatment, I tried
to open communication w ith my department administrators, but the
appeals were ignored. My 1989 letter to my dean, groping for words
(the term "Political Correctness" hadn't yet been popularized) to
describe my programmatic shunning was the first of twelve overtures
to my Executive Committee, my chair, and my dean. I also made pleas to
other administrators to be moved to another department, or even to
another campus.

     -- There were magazine and newspaper editorials about my plight
as early as May 1990. (Before the "PC" term was picked up by the
press. Prior to the disput e over English 306.) My case provides
evidence that "PC" was practiced without a name before Richard
Bernstein of the New York Times first mentioned that term in a
national article in October 1990.

     4. "National organizations have investigated and dismissed his claims."

     -- True, the Modern Language Association Committee on Academic
Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities in effect
censured us E 306 dissenters in the Spring 1991 MLA Newsletter -- but
without allowing us to present our case .

     -- Agreed, a particular AAUP national officer has denounced me --
but without checking with me about the details of my ordeal, though
falsely alleging that he was familiar with [my] case."

     -- Revealing an incredible bias, The Chronicle of Higher
Education wrote three articles assessing my role in the E 306
controversy, in each instance suppressing any mention of the Marxist
textbook that sparked my opposition to the restructuring of this
required English composition course.

     5. "Alan just couldn't take the heat of a mild little internal
departmental debate."

     -- Recently a former colleague's letter to the editor in Austin
compared me to a "jilted Hollywood starlet," sinking to a new low in
character assassination. The enmity is simply appalling.

     -- The May 1992 issue of Measure, the newsletter of the
University Centers for Rational Alternatives, recently reported some
revealing words uttered by one of my former UT English department
members at a recent New York City meeting of academic radicals:
Multiculturalism must promote the "politicizing [of] the entire
curriculum." Furthermore, "curriculum reform means resource diversion,
and .  . . the new theoretical approaches are inherently ideological!"
Forthcoming changes will determine "who gets to teach what courses,
and who gets to teach at all." Does this sort of talk sound
amateurish and harmless? Remember, English 306 would have affected
half of the new students at UT.

     -- I endured four years of mistreatment and political harassment,
hoping for change, before I left. A teacher less dedicated would have
departed sooner.

     6. "He likes the notoriety."

     -- A recent letter in the Daily Texan by a UT English professor
alleged that I am merely a "publicity hound" (meaning, I presume,
stop looking into his case, please!). An undergraduate student
replied to that professor in another letter: thanks to you people,
Alan Gribben could have stayed here and gotten free publicity, every
week, if that was what he wanted.

     7. "He's a closet right-winger, a tool of ultra-conservative
think tanks and foundations."

     -- In the last few years I have been invited to speak to a wide
spectrum of academic, civic, and political groups concerned about
issues of academic freedom, classroom integrity, civil liberties, and
individual rights. If Republicans, Christians, taxpayers, professors,
and students indicate sympathy for my struggle and the lessons of a
purge at Texas, does that lessen the importance of keeping the
university a place to debate and exchange ideas? Where else could I
have turned? My portrayal by the supposed guardians of fairness and
impartiality in higher education--the MLA, the AAUP, and The
Chronicle of Higher Education -- gave me no hope for a retraction of
their slanted stories about me. I would have stayed at UT, had that
workplace not been wrecked by unrelenting vicious falsehoods .

     8. "He was a founding member, or an officer of, the National
Association of Scholars (NAS), which funded his efforts to defeat E
306."

     -- My wife and I received not a dime from NAS to tackle the E 306
proposal.  We used our own money to make copies of articles, as the
public grew interested and made inquiries. And I have never been an
officer of that group, as intellectually and politically diverse as
it is.

     -- But where did the money come from to promote E 306 and to
demonize me in illustrated publications distributed throughout the
community and the nation, w e have often wondered? The press was never
interested in that tantalizing questi on.

     -- My opponents won't concede that they created me -- by falsely
slandering me, and by publicizing me as a warning to other professors.
They have to insist that I was created by a right-wing conspiracy.
Otherwise, I become a real symbo l of their heartlessness and deceit.

     9. "He hates UT and Texas. We are the real friends of the University."

     -- Nothing could be further from the truth. I loved that school,
and felt a bandoned by it. It was the politicized UT English faculty
and graduate students, after all, who held a "Bring Something Texan to
Burn Bonfire" in 1988! It might as well have been a bonfire of the
humanities, given the attitude that came to prevail among those who
cavorted around that blaze.

     10. "Notice that he went to a city in the Deep South, a region
with a racist past." A director of a major academic center near
Austin recently mentioned this "fact" to various people, as though my
choice of locales sealed my guilt.

     -- Without going into great detail, suffice it to say that those
who are truly familiar with the Montgomery-Birmingham-Atlanta region
know of its profound if belated dedication to civil rights that has in
many cases outstripped the progress in other areas of the United
States. The faculty in my new department are from everywhere,
including Princeton and Berkeley. They were a fascinating group of
people from diverse backgrounds, and they welcomed the arrival of me
and my Asian-American wife.

     -- Moreover, the fact is that I had offers from small schools in
the Rocky Mountains, the Plains, and other regions. When I visited
these campuses I had the feeling that I was back in an English
department again, and that the students' needs were the first priority
there. For I discovered a tier of small state universities where the
emphasis is still on teaching literature, language, and writing, and
yet where the research is impressive. On my job search I made other
related discoveries. For example, I observed that people at these
smaller public universities are not torn by the same strong currents
of conformity. They are more apt to demonstrate habits of independent
thought.

     -- I also found that scores of women and minorities, including
African-American faculty members, do not benefit from the princely
salaries of their ideological counterparts at Stanford, Princeton,
and other so-called "status" schools.  These professors and
instructors, you see, just teach about authors, literature , language,
and composition. They teach English without indoctrinations in ideology.
Where is the justice in these women and minorities being left
out?

     11. A former colleague with whom I was always friendly went into
print recently with new charges against me:

     -- My scholarship was "unsophisticated. " In actuality, however,
I had kept myself informed of the many appealing developments of
deconstruction, Marxism, radical feminism; I just had other things to
say about United States literature.

     -- He also claimed that I was "schoolmarmish" -- a code-word,
meaning that I believed in including formal instruction in style and
grammar in a required first-year composition course like E 306.

     12. Another professor has been telling people that I was
"anti-social." If memory serves, this disparaging person was among the
ten colleagues who did not attend, and didn't notify Irene and me in
advance, when we made our last stab at entertaining for the
department. (And he personally helped spread the rumor in 1990 that I
was in the process of suing the department and deposing everyone, thus
adding to my isolation.)

     13. "Alcoholism": not even worth refuting, to those who know my
personal habits. This kind of absurdity could only get passed around
in a department of eighty members and a university of 2,300 faculty,
where it's so difficult to know everyone personally.

     14. "He's worse than a conservative, he's a right-wing extremist kook."

     -- One of my valued former English colleagues telephoned Austin
business people who had expressed support for my views to my
department, assuring them that , whereas he was a Republican who had
voted for George Bush, I was well-known to be beyond the pale,
alarming even my most conservative colleagues. He hinted that I was
not exactly mentally stable, but that gets us back to another category
of discrediting.

     15. He's got a "martyr complex" (a charge recently made in print
by a professor who still lives in Austin and retained his English
position).

     -- A martyr is easy to demartyr, however -- give him his
reputation back. S top the character assassination. Invite him to
return to The University of Texas , for that matter. (Neither the
chairman nor the department ever did.)

*     *     *

And there really was a price for my acts of conscience, after all.

We sold our house on a terrible Austin market under great pressure.

The move itself set us back around $10,000 outright, and at least
$25,000 all in all.

My wife and children and I are still recovering from the stress of the
past five years. We realize, for all this, that many families have
faced much worse fates . (We heard from people whose experiences
certainly put our trials into perspect ive.)

I have a challenging new job, pleasant students, and we live in a
scenic and his toric city--the birthplace of the modern Civil Rights
movement.

During the past five years I have found inspiration in many courageous
people:

-- My spouse Irene Wong and her parents, whose friends in China tasted
the heavy hand of totalitarianism.

-- The valiant few in the Department of English at UT Austin who stood
at my shoulder and were tested sorely in the E 306 controversy.

-- My parents and brother, who agonized with me and celebrated my
escape from th at vile situation.

-- Friends within the University of Texas, who must necessarily remain
nameless, who have given aid and comfort.

-- Texans throughout the Austin and state communities, who have
written and telephoned to apologize on behalf of that school, its
faculty, and its administrators.

-- James Coleman, who endured a horrible browbeating several decades
ago when hi s sociological research did not turn up the proper
findings. Today he is president of his professional organization.

Various individuals deserve to be singled out for acts of genuine bravery:

-- A week before we left, a professor took me and my children to lunch
at the UT Faculty Club, during the busiest hour, and seated us next to
the table where c rtain English professors usually gather. It was her
"statement" in support of academic freedom and collegiality, she
said.

-- A professor in another department, who befriended us during our
final years at UT, dedicated his recent book to Alan Gribben and
Irene Wong, and to their courage. That will be a compensating legacy
for our children, and a heritage for his, I like to think.

-- Several churches and prayer groups invited me to their discussions
and included me in their prayers--a wonderful sensation of group
support.

                        *     *     *

What would be the worst nightmare of the Academic Leftists?

     1. The press doesn't tire of the "Political Correctness" issue
and begins t o understand that it involves much more insidious aspects
than the "PC" words and phrases that are sweeping the campuses, or
even the "forbidden speech" controversies.

     2. The talented young minority and women students whom I and
others have taught for twenty years ignore the white Left, merge with
mainstream Americans, and chart their own course. (That's why the
radicals are pressing so hard--they k ow it's only a matter of time
before things work themselves out and the exchange faculty from
Eastern Europe arrive here to scoff at their airy versions of what
they lovingly call an "Enabling Marxism.")

     3. Timid school administrators lose so many state appropriations
and private donations that they are replaced with people with some
genuine educational principles (along the lines of Donald Kagan, John
Silber, John Agresto), and they begin to protect people who display
the courage of their convictions.

     4. The alumni organize themselves around these issues, and insist
on more than winning football teams and cathedral-like alumni
centers. They refuse to settle for good vibes from personable
presidents and endeavor to champion excellence and freedom in
education and a role for the humanities that returns it to preserving
the best that has been thought and said in our culture and as well as
in others.

     5. The faculty leaves the students alone, so the students can
learn to work together in creating a strong, secure campus, despite
strains produced by affirmative action policies and what amount to
quotas in various parts of the academic enterprise, because the
problem is not with the students. (The radical Academic Left loves to
capitalize on isolated fraternity incidents.)

     6. The media come to realize that there are virtually no racists,
sexists, homophobes, differently abled-phobes, etc., among the
humanities teaching faculties. This idea of needing to purge a few
designated reactionaries is simply a smear against their colleagues
that covers up a vicious power-grab and eliminates all opposition.

     7. The faculty return to teaching their subject matter. One
English professor at a major Midwestern university recently debated
me and proclaimed that he announces at the beginning of his classes
that he is a Marxist who perceives the U. S. as the cause of most
troubles in the world, but that he is fair and invite s his students
to differ with his opinion. Who is he kidding? And what has this got
to do with "English" as a field of study?

                             *     *     *

We dissenters might agree on three goals that we are seeking:

     a. Intellectual diversity, that is, a campus offering both
traditional and non-traditional studies. In the field of English,
let's teach British and American literature as well as critical
theory. Marxist and capitalist thought. Women's Studies Centers that
encompass the nuclear family in addition to alternative gender roles.
Ethnic Studies programs that are not purely anti-U.S. or anti-white .

     b. True academic freedom and tolerance, and administrators who
understand those principles. Return to the concept of the university
as a marketplace of ideas; let the students choose their "approaches"
to the subject matter. Truth-in-advertising for academic courses; no
hidden political agendas.

     c. Integrity of disciplines: English composition courses should
teach English, and not pseudo-sociology or pseudo-law. Place less
emphasis on interdiscipli nary studies and joint departmental
appointments, which have enabled the radicals to control more than
one department.

How do we achieve these objectives?

     1. Stop donating to schools that condone this intellectual
bullying, and let them know why.

     2. Avoid giving to deans' discretionary funds--or even
presidential ones. Be specific in your funding, when you donate at
all to "PC"-plagued schools.

     3. Side with the attacked faculty: write letters in their support
to university administrators and trustees.

     4. Attend liberated schools and departments. Read the college
catalogues and course descriptions to understand the perspectives of
a department.

     5 . Don't be easily persuaded by slanderous innuendoes about
resisting faculty. Look into the issues, the breaches of academic
procedures, the charges of " misrepresentation."

     6. Support resisting groups like University Centers for Rational
Alternativ es, the National Association of Scholars, Accuracy in
Academia, and the Center for Individual Rights.

     7. Read journals such as Lingua Franca and The Chronicle of
Higher Education with strong skepticism.

     8. Oppose the strongarm methods of the Modern Language
Association and the American Association of University Professors, and
let them know why.

     9. Commend the victories of E 306 at UT, and of Professors
Gottfredson and Blits at Delaware, Professor Dan McMurry at Middle
Tennessee State University, Professor Ward Parks at Louisiana State
University, and Professor Paul Lewis' stand-off at Tulane University.

     10. Celebrate the spirit of freedom that brave faculty and
students keep reintroducing, against daunting odds.

You can't "win, " my former chairman warned me. But the English 306
students at Texas are studying composition again, rather than a
slanted social sciences read er called Racism and Sexism.

In any event, the fact that I became part of the emerging conscience
of the univ ersity, in spite of my battering by leftwing forces,
proves that others too can find ways to carry on the academic
reformation. ##
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.