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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.