From:  "Tran Huu Dung" <tran.dung@wright.edu> 
To:  "'George Slone'" <todslone@yahoo.com>, constant.force@netaccess.co.nz

Subject:  RE: Cartoon of the Month
Date:  Sat, 3 Jun 2006 10:56:52 -0400
 

Omigod!  I’ve died and go to heavens!

An unbelievable honor!  Many, many many many thanks!

Sincerely,

Tran Huu Dung, Managing Editor, Arts & Letters Daily, http://www.aldaily.com

N.B.:  I queried The Chronicle of Higher Education as to why some literary journals were permitted listing on the site, while others prohibited, and received a predictably lame answer from Jeanne Ferris, Senior Editor, The Chronicle Review, which, however, was actually surprising since I didn't expect a response at all:   

"The Chronicle owns Arts & Letters Daily, but they are pretty much separate from The Chronicle of Higher Education, and completely separate from The Chronicle Review, the opinion section where I work, so I can't comment about Arts & Letters Daily."

And thus was how censorship (i.e., "moderation") operated at The Chronicle of Higher Education.  On another note, the number of inane diversionary, court-jester-like articles (many under pseudonyms) published in the Chronicle of Higher Education by professors and academic administrators was alarming, to say the least. A certain number of the author-professors of those articles didn't even have the guts to sign their real names.  Pseudonym was in vogue, at least in the cowardly world of higher education.  Just try getting a tough, critical article on higher education published!  In vain, I had tried... over and over and over.  The childish Ms. Mentor column published week after week in The Chronicle, authored by Emily Toth (ms.mentor@chronicle.com), of the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, alone ought to provoke serious-minded, truth-concerned professors to stand up and shout BASTA!  But where were those professors?  Why didn't they speak out? Did they even exist?  Self-professed "tenured radical" Cary Nelson had become president of the American Association of University Professors! Talk about Sixties Sellouts!!!  One must wonder how much self-muzzling the tenured radical had to do to ascend to such a position.  When I informed him that my comments regarding his article published in Inside Higher Ed had been censored, he remained silent!  Oh, but of course!  For a sampling of some of those lame articles and Ms. Mentor columns, see Chronicle2.  For the cartoon, I did on Nelson, see (www.cary-nelson.org/nelson/cartoon.html).  Yes, one has to give him credit for posting it on his website... but did he even understand it? 

Well, the editor of The American Dissident, for one, did exist, though he was currently an unemployed professor.  I was dismissed from my online teaching position at Davenport University for speaking truthfully to students.  Most professors, probably ninety-nine percent, spent their time, not truth telling, but rather building up the wall of fraud separating them from their students. Diversity had been a great smoke screen for higher education.  It had conveniently replaced truth. 
 

The following essays and letters were written, unless otherwise noted, by the editor of The American Dissident.  My conclusions without fail supported the hypothesis that the First Amendment was barely tolerated, rarely if ever encouraged, in higher, as well as secondary, education. 

Dear Editors, Chronicle of Higher Education: 
If only you could see!  If only you could see how you encourage academic cowardice by publishing academic cowards including "David Jones is the pseudonym of a director of annual giving at a liberal-arts college in the Midwest."  It makes me want to vomit... that this character is so fearful that he needs to give himself a cowardly pseudonym.  God help democracy! 
BTW, check out my website:  I have devoted a page to The Chronicle of Higher Education and its role as an integral part of the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex.  The latter of course is helping to undermine democracy.   

Best always,

G. Tod Slone, editor of The American Dissident

The Chronicle of Higher Education enjoyed (until recently) a virtual monopoly on information in higher education. Now Inside Higher Ed also seems to have a good share.  But it too engages in the censorship game.  Over the past 15 years, both journals have systematically refused to publish anything the editor of The American Dissident had submitted as college professor, including letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, accounts of corruption, and caustic cartoon illustrations. The following rejected items cast light on the disturbing hypocrisy and inanity pervading many of the nation's colleges and universities. The Chronicle apparently prefered darkness to sunshine.  Scroll down for the following:
 

1. Censored Letters to the Editor
2. Censored Op-ed Essays
A. Performing Experiments in Free Speech on Your Particular Campus, of course…
B. Phasing out Standardized Academic Careerists
 

1. Censored letters to the editor
Senior Editor Jeanne Ferris commented with regards an essay I'd submitted, naming names. 
 

Subj:  "The Cold Passion for Truth Hunts in No Pack" 

Date:  11/5/03 10:13:10 AM Eastern Standard Time

From:  jeanne.ferris@chronicle.com

To:  todslone@yahoo.com

I'm sorry to say that my colleagues didn't feel that your piece would work for us, and I can't encourge you to submit a shortened version. And I'm sorry to say, too, that because of the press of work on pieces that are appropriate for us, we can't take much time to discuss pieces that aren't right. I've already devoted more time to your manuscript than I typically do to those that we have to turn down.

 

Subj:  "The Cold Passion for Truth Hunts in No Pack" 

Date:  11/5/03 9:57:19 AM Eastern Standard Time

From:  todslone@yahoo.com

To:  jeanne.ferris@chronicle.com

Dear Senior Editor:
Well, I'd gladly chop down "The Cold Passion for Truth Hunts in No Pack" and eliminate the exchange with the other editor just to get it published in the Chronicle.  I'm quite open to editing.  But is the message perhaps really too harsh?  Is simply suggesting that maybe academic poets might consider becoming activist poets and RISK criticizing those in power, risk writing poetry in that sense, much too radical?  I've just finished editing cahier special on Francois Villon who did name names in his poetry and thus dared commit lese-majesty and heresy at the RISK of his very life.  It seems today that both lese-majesty and heresy still exist here in academe.  I'm not suggesting that academic poets RISK their lives… but just something... and to do so by writing the rude truth.  I'm currently reading Solzhenitsyn's The Oak and the Calf.  Ponder what that Nobel prize winner RISKED in comparison, for example, with our Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon.  Evidently, RISK would be a unique concept in academe, but how to get it into academe?  How not to frighten the academics with such a bold concept?  Thank you for your attention. 
Best,
G. Tod Slone, Ed.
The American Dissident

Subj:  "The Cold Passion for Truth Hunts in No Pack" 

Date:  11/5/03 8:33:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
From:  jeanne.ferris@chronicle.com

To:  todslone@yahoo.com

I'm sorry to report that your manuscript is not quite right for The Chronicle Review. It is too long for us, and some of the contents (e.g., your exchanges with the editor of another publication) wouldn't be appropriate.

Thank you, however, for thinking of The Chronicle.

Jeanne Ferris

Senior Editor

The Chronicle Review

The Chronicle of Higher Education

1255 23rd St., NW

Washington, DC 20037

202-466-1066 (phone)

202-452-1033 (fax)

jeanne.ferris@chronicle.com

From Ms. Mentor, "Words of wisdom about academic culture" columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education: Ms. Mentor advises readers that once you have a Ph.D., you are a certified expert in your field-whereupon the grading standards suddenly change. What separates [sic] the goats from the iguanas are people skills. Any unit can hire a competent teacher-scholar, but they also want a colleague who is pleasant to be around, shares the work cheerfully, and enhances their workdays. They can't use a bully, a pompous ass-or a mouse. 5/03

To Ms. Mentor: Regarding your "When to Remain Silent" editorial, no, baby, but the academic "units" (what a horrendous term!) can sure as hell use a coward, a pompous backslapper-or a sheep… that is, another like-minded see-no-evil-hear-none-either "iguana" with "people skills" who would be adverse to criticizing the hypocrisies and inanities proliferating in "units" across the nation. Ever attend one of those obligatory, imbecilic workshops? If not, try one on assessment. Baby, you seem to participate joyously in the fall of the Ivory Tower, that is, in its accelerating cooptation of the corporate model of authoritarianism, obedience, silence and grotesque conformity, not to mention the lingo and uncanny sameness of corporate modus operandi cancerously spreading in the belly of the beast academe. Have you ever wondered that maybe that "bully" might be speaking the truth, albeit the rude truth and that your iguanoid sheep clique might feel "bullied" because that rare department critic has actually dared-yes, it takes a goddamn hell of a lot of courage, something you and your sellout flock evidently lack-"to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all its ways." How piteous that academics seem to loathe the "bully" who would dare go against the grain and make waves. And believe me, baby, you don't know academe at all if you think uncomfortable truths can be presented with "people skills" to PhD iguanoid sheep with ostrich necks firmly implanted in the buttocks of their Chairpersons. No, more often than not, the sledgehammer is the only way to shove egregious hypocrisy and inanity into their faces, forcing their noses to sniff, their eyes to see and their ears to hear. Nevertheless, I am in agreement with you that that will not resolve anything at all. However, for the sake of truth and to shake up the little complacent "unit" creatures, it must be done just the same. Finally, how piteous that you remain ever content that The Chronicle would never publish this letter.

To The Chronicle of Higher Education: Since The Chronicle constitutes the only weekly publication on matters related to higher education, I find myself reading your newspaper periodically. What else would I consult when searching for employment in Academe? Since I am ever curious, unlike most professors, I also tend to peruse your columns… with a critical eye. After reading Dr. Sellout Dean Stanley Fish this morning regarding email, I cannot help but voice my opinion once again on just how offensive both he and Dr. Sellout Professor Ms. Mentor regarding the embarrassing degree of 'cutesiness', if not downright childishness, in style and content. Why does it seem that only an infinitesimal number of academics in America, myself included, would rather read serious hardcore columnists interested in exposing the hardcore corruption rampant in Academe? Why does it seem that the large majority of academics would prefer reading the nonsense written by Fish and Mentoid? The banal and merry blather they tend to spew week after week is beneath the dignity of thinking men and women fully aware of the horrors existent in today's world. Why not a column by a hardcore critic of the ivory tower, one apt not to please, one apt to offend academics? Periodically over the past decade, I've asked you that very question… in vain of course. I suppose you'd think I would have learned by now just to accept the pervasive, happy-face nonsense… but I cannot seem to. Even today I receive an email from the chair of the department where I teach asking for my opinion on whether to rename Humanities a Department or keep the Programs designation. Indeed, does that concern not seem to sum up the frivolity rampant in Academe during these times of crisis? Evidently, you will not publish this letter, and that is fine with me, for indicative that I am where a writer ought… on the edge of what most would not publish. Indeed, most academics seem to have so easily poured into the Academe, Love It or Leave It mold. I just cannot seem to fit in. [No Response]

To The Chronicle of Higher Education: Contacting you is not the problem as in "how to contact us." The problem is getting an answer from you.

From Doug Lederman, Mgr. Ed., The Chronicle: I'm sorry-had we communicated before? I don't know anything about this issue you're raising, but I'd be more than happy to look into it.

To D. L., Mgr. Ed.: I believe this is our first communication. I have sent numerous letters, essays and even cartoons to The Chronicle... as blackballed professor. Never have I ever received a personal response. I'd sent a batch of cartoons, for example, after querying one of your assistants for a green light... six or seven months ago. She never responded. I'd also sent a highly critical essay on Critical Thinking courses and programs. No response. The Chronicle is making a big mistake by allowing its unwritten premise to rule: DON'T OFFEND THE READERSHIP.

From D. L., Mgr. Ed.: This just makes me wonder who you've been writing to all this time, and why it hasn't reached me. I wouldn't promise to publish anything of yours sight unseen, but I can say with certainty that "Don't offend the readership" is neither a written nor unwritten rule here. If your work is good and thoughtful and provocative, it should stand a reasonable chance of being published. I will be glad to pass materials on to the relevant people first-hand if you'd like to send it to me.

To D. L., Mgr. Ed.: I appreciate the response, but either you are unusually naive and suffering from unconscious denial, or simply bullshitting me. Of course, I doubt the latter. Let the following essay prove my assertion that you simply refuse to perceive the reality of The Chronicle as corporate voice for the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex that seeks to mutate Higher Learning into Corporate Learning. The Chronicle will never publish it, and you can provide a myriad of lame reasons why. It will prove that The Chronicle is not a tough, critical organ of the press, but one that seeks above all else not to offend its powerful readership (i.e., entrenched tenured professors and MBA college presidents and deans). Of course, I'd be tempted to change my mind after so many years of attempting to interest your newspaper in hardcore critique, if you out of the blue decided you might be interested. After all, anything is possible, and I remain ever open to changes in Chronicle management, though ever doubtful any significant changes will occur, thanks especially to the easily purchased and ever complacent, tenured professorate. [No Response]
 

Rejected Op-Ed Essays
A. Performing Experiments in Free Speech On Your Particular Campus, of course...

Unlike columnist Fremlin, “self-described 'white Canadian heathen' finds her niche teaching at a historically black university” (see “Where I Belong,” Chronicle 12/11/02), I have not as white, male American found my niche at an HBCU, not because of my race or gender, but rather because, unlike the bulk of college professors, black or white, female or male, American or foreign, I dare, in the words of Emerson, “to stand upright and speak the rude truth in all its ways.” Indeed, I criticize not behind closed doors, but openly. I operate as staunch individual, not as department team player and team thinker.

Is it not high time that college and university professors criticize their individual institutions openly, courageously, and vigorously? Is it not high time for them to stop brandishing the right-wing 60s slogan, perversely transformed into the present politically-correct Academe, Love It or Leave It? Is it not high time to thwart the trend of academe's corporate co-optation, which has included not only the “purchase” of faculty departments but also the spread of terminology and ideology? Department chairpersons should not be reduced to Unit Managers, nor students to clients, nor professors to marketers, nor presidents to fundraisers. The trend of corporate co-optation must be broken by newfound courage and individuality in the professorate. It must be replaced by a new trend of audacious questioning and challenging. Academe, HBCUs included, has been increasingly plagued by excess positivism and conformity. Whereas collegiality clearly benefits from this aberrant drift, truth, debate, and justice evidently must suffer.

My first year went quite smoothly at the historically black Methodist women's college in North Carolina because I kept my mouth shut. Is it not that simple in academe? Is it not that sad? My chair gave me a glowing faculty evaluation and, aware that I was seriously looking for another position, encouraged me to return for a second year. But two serious offers, interestingly both from HBCUs in less than desirable locations and paying equally unattractive salaries, had to be pondered. Because of my open decrying of corruption in Academe, I was being blackballed either directly or indirectly and had been forced on to the outer fringes of Academe, where some HBCUs. I decided against the offers. After all, I'd gotten along fine with my colleagues. So, why go from bad to bad? When I arrived at the college for my second year, this past August, the chair's friendly attitude towards me had radically changed. I'd missed the first several days of workshops and blablabla meetings because of a backache. As the weeks went by, it became evident the chair would never forgive me. Curiously, she would not even admit the existence of our new hostile rapport. I thus decided to end my low-key, closed-mouth professorial behavior and bring forth my high-key, unprofessorial, dissident poet behavior by performing a series of experiments in free speech in the form of departmental pamphlets and Op Eds. My first notable experiment was to publish “Wholesome Skepticism, Not Institutional Loyalty” (News & Record, 8/25/02), which criticized the bland, self-congratulatory discourses commonly made by college and university presidents, in particular, the statement made by UNCG Chancellor Sullivan this past fall: “Our people trust the university, and they believe in the university.” Indeed, how do we know the people trust the university? Why should they trust it? Shouldn't we question and challenge it, rather than blindly trust it? Have we not already heard CEOs blather: “Our stockholders trust the corporation, and they believe in the corporation”?

Not one colleague commented on the Op Ed. However, I did receive a letter of praise from a history professor at Elon University. Normally, the chair placed such articles authored by department members on the Humanities bulletin board. Yet my Op Ed remained conspicuously absent. I thus mentioned it to the chair, who gave me permission to hang it myself, which I did. Interestingly, my photo was soon cut out from it. I mentioned that to the chair, who admitted she'd done the cutting because somebody had defaced it. My next experiment was the posting of a pamphlet, “Idolatry or Verity?” on the Humanities bulletin board, containing a critical cartoon I'd drawn of guest speaker Coretta Scott King. Again, there was no response. Weeks later, I distributed a new pamphlet critical of the Humanities Mission statement during a Humanities Department meeting, the first I'd ever attended replete with fire and animus. Keep in mind I did not use foul language, nor shout during the meeting. The comments of three professors reflect perhaps the general reaction to “rude-truth” criticism in institutions of higher learning. The first called me “arrogant.” The second suggested in fine America-Love-It-or-Leave-It fashion: “If you don't like it here, maybe you should look for another job!” The third didn't beat around the bush at all, arguing to my amazement: “You're not part of the community. You take pleasure in being on the margins. You don't have a right to criticize the mission statement!”

A week after the meeting I distributed another pamphlet, “Notes from an Academic Cult,” to department members summarizing their reaction to my mission-statement critique and the implications thereof. Not one member responded. Clearly, I'd now become an official enemy of the Humanities Department, as in Ibsen's “An Enemy of the People.” My next two Op Eds, “Misguided Leadership, Donuts, and the First Amendment” (News & Record, 11/3/02) and “Drowning Healthy Dissent… with Deluge of Positivism: A Different View for the Sake of Diversity of Minds” (student newspaper, 12/02) would render me an official enemy of the entire college. The former included a satirical cartoon I'd drawn, rejected by the News & Record. After all, it depicted black women as obese, a taboo subject. But as poet, much more than professor, I am compelled to openly criticize such taboos, job security or not.

Not one faculty member responded. However, students responded and almost decided to boycott my classes… because I'd dared state openly that student obesity was perhaps the most important problem on campus. A glimmer of intelligence from an unknown source kept them from doing so. Instead, they sent me a letter of invitation to a special forum held to “discuss three of the articles that you have written.” No such thing had ever occurred at the state college in Massachusetts where I'd taught five years. There, the student newspaper had systematically refused to publish anything I submitted, including an account of my sudden eviction from my office mid-semester. In fact, I couldn't interest any periodical in the entire state vis-à-vis the corruption I'd witnessed and fell victim to.

The audience included some 45 people, including professors, the president and VPAA. But the well-attended forum turned out to be nothing more than a tar and feathering. Sadly, the four student panelists, four of the finest students at the college, proved incapable of reading a text objectively and with intellectual independence. They were entirely indoctrinated to the extent that one panelist, class president, declared to an applauding audience that “obesity is not a problem” at the college, that black women were not obese because they were unfairly compared statistically to the body structures of white men. Wow! Is that what higher education has come to? Moreover, the four student panelists argued that self-censorship did not even exist in the professorate, reasoning that their other professors did not think as I did. If it did not exist, however, why was I the only professor at the college daring to criticize the student donut walk to a local Krispie Kreme franchise led by the college president accompanied by board member Maya Angelou, poet stepping out of limousine? Why was I the only professor willing to question the president's acceptance of a new car as gift from a local corporation? When logic fails, it is time to manifest profound concern! One of the student panelists embarked on a tirade on how wonderful it was to have defeated segregation, wildly extrapolating from my essays, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the subject. Yet, if eliminating segregation was an important deed, and it was, why was the panelist voluntarily and contentedly attending an entirely segregated college? At least, I had an excuse: I couldn't find a job anywhere else. Of course, it is impossible to convince captives of ideology with logic and reason alone. The college was shackling its students and professors in an unwritten policy of self-esteem über alles, including and especially the truth. Constant self-congratulatory remarks and backslapping were stifling higher education, converting it into something entirely perverse.

Finally, once again, I find myself hunting for a new job in Academe. Nevertheless, I shall continue my vocal protest against the diverse perversions witnessed at the HBCU where I continue teaching for a final semester. Some, if not most, would say I simply do not belong in the Academy. Yet, I would fervently disagree. Academe needs staunch individualists-not ideology-obedient sheep-willing to question and challenge overtly. At age 54, I am tired of hunting for work and increasingly disgusted with academe's rampant disregard for the law regarding age discrimination. Nevertheless, as poet on the edge, I would not have it any other way.
 

B. Back to Basics: Create First Principles Courses and Centers, Incorporating Modules of Real Critical Thinking And Phasing out Standardized Academic Careerists

Our country's schoolchildren need to be taught democratic principles in their historic context and present relevance, with practical civics experiences to develop their citizen skills and a desire to use them, and so they will be nurtured to serve as a major reservoir of future democracy.
-Ralph Nader, The Concord Principles, An Agenda for a New Democracy, #10 Feb 21, 2000

Focus on the truth must supplant all other points of concern currently being raised and “pushed” by education reformists if colleges and universities are to change significantly for the better. Reading and writing must be considered as “means” useful for the discovery and propagation of truth, rather than as “ends” unto themselves. Placing truth as the prime focal point in higher education would help create a new breed of citizen apt to question and challenge the state and its multitudinous institutions, rather than simply team play, network and fit in. Blind patriots rather than comprising the majority of the population would become a species on the verge of extinction.

Over the course of vicissitude, I've come to believe that civic responsibility ought not consist of mere casting of ballots once every four years, but rather standing upright and speaking the rude truth, and otherwise challenging corrupt institutions and leaders, no matter how small or insignificant. Dishonesty, especially in academe, opened my eyes. As a public college professor, it was astonishing to witness the extent of nepotism, cronyism, and fraud, regarding faculty evaluations, sexual harassment complaint procedures, suppression of free speech, 14th amendment violation, secrecy of records and a kept student press, not to mention the apathy of my colleagues. Just how widespread is the cancer? Seeking to reenter the ivory tower, but also seeking the truth, I included the following statement in my cover letters sent to prospective employers:

Might your department and institution constitute one of those very rare bastions in Academe focused on truth and justice and open to critical thinkers without Orwellian writer's taboos (e.g., don't criticize the hand that feeds)? Would you be willing to consider me as a viable candidate for the position opening given that I blew the whistle on intrinsic corruption at a state college and am creator and editor of a literary review, The American Dissident, devoted to improving America through free and open criticism of all American icons and institutions? If so, I would be honored to apply for the position.

Interestingly, the statement did irritate a certain number of Job Lords, including one who articulated what is perhaps, if not probably, the reigning mentality in Academe. The professor in question is the chairperson of a university department, whose name need not be revealed.

I also feel that surely someone who goes out and gets a Ph.D. knows what the academic game is all about, and if he/she doesn't want to play by those rules, then really he should play some other game, and I don't pretend that the rules are just or fair, but they probably are more just and more fair than those of most human games.

It is rare to hear the word 'corruption' in Academe, which prefers euphemisms, including “politics,” “mismanagement,” and “in-fighting.” These sweeter terms cover up the harsher realities of secret arbitration settlements, secret grievance hearings, corrupt professional harassment procedures, and blackballing. In simpler terms, that department chairperson was really stating: “Academe love it or leave it!” She was reflecting the mentality of the very large majority of the professors I've known during 15 years of tenure-track employment. That mentality needs to be examined, exposed, and terminated.

My proposal for a new, exploratory course-this essay serves as rough-draft outline-was sent to several institutions of higher learning because, well, they were actually seeking unique proposals for courses. For example, I sent it to Deep Springs College in Nevada, which “prepares a select group of 26 young men (avg. SAT 1500) for lives of service to humanity” and is “committed to a diversity of perspectives in education and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds.” I also sent it to Duke University, which was seeking Duke Fellows in Teaching Writing, and whose announcement underscored: “We are building an interdisciplinary faculty to teach a first-year course in Academic Writing linked to an innovative Writing-in-the-Disciplines program. Fellows draw on their disciplinary training and interests to design seminars introducing students to academic and intellectual writing.”

The proposal sought to initiate the very disarming of the ivory tower and thwart the continual bombardment against honesty, common sense and justice with business-as-usual educationist jargon, diversionary explosions of lesser concerns, and scud missiles of egregious apathy. Over the years, I have tried in vain to interest The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lingua Franca, Thought & Action (NEA), Adjunct Advocate, amongst others, in the issue of intrinsic academic corruption. Over the years, these periodicals have responded, not with interest, not with indignation, but rather with form rejection cards.

Unfortunately, whenever I find myself skimming The Chronicle's job lists, the inane, if not asinine, Ann Landers-type column penned by Ms. Mentor, chides me, first provoking a certain nausea, then outrage, because it fills up such valuable space with grotesque silliness and vacuity where that space could have been used to examine the “game.” Over the past year, I've sent several critical letters to Ms. Mentor, but in the name of positivism, civility and collegiality, she too has chosen silence.

It is evident that The Chronicle of Higher Education does not wish to promote visceral change in the Ivory Tower, for it has tapped into large sums of money, thanks to its general support, if not parroting, of the Nation's standardized academic careerists, professors and administrators alike. Perhaps, it is also time that The Chronicle, its board members, its connections with big business, the stories it quells, and the overall part it plays in the academic “profscam,” in the words of Charles J. Sykes, be profoundly vetted, if not exposed. The following is typical of the twaddle published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, week after week, by Ms. Mentor:

Question: I'm a young assistant professor in a very collegial department of 30 people. For my wedding next year, I'm wondering: Who from my department should I invite? Everybody? Nobody? Only the people I'm closest to? The issue is serious, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, since these people will eventually be voting on me for tenure. I want my good friends there, but inviting everybody is a bit of a stretch. What to do?

Answer: (the response was much too long to reprint in this essay)

Question: I'm in a one-year job, and my boss-a mediocre researcher-recently called me into his office to tell me, "Don't compete with me." Since then he and our no-name colleagues have ignored or disparaged my publications and achievements. In this uneasy atmosphere, should I-without badmouthing my current co-workers-be looking for another job? Answer: Yes. (from “Are Academics Real People,” 1/07/00)

Instead of being outraged by the existence of Dr. Semicretino, mediocre researcher (second question), The Chronicle of Higher Education (Ms. Mentor) suggests the junior professor simply leave his job, as if jobs in academe were so easy to come by. Besides, what would that professor have to do to obtain a letter of recommendation from Dr. Semicretino if he were to resign? Without such a letter, his very career would quite possibly, if not probably, be terminated.

Ms. Mentor's smug advice outrages me week after week. How I fumed reading her column (8/18/00): “When to Tattle.” But then surely I must be quite different from the standardized academic careerist who would certainly concur with labeling whistleblowing against corrupt colleagues as childish “tattling.” I have had ample opportunity to observe the standardized academic careerist and his/her procedures. In the beginning of my bumpy career, I was quite astonished by the similar and disquieting personality traits possessed by a disturbing number of colleagues. Towards the end of it, I was, of course, no longer surprised, just disgusted. What traits seem to define the standardized academic careerist? The first and most dominant that come to mind include cowardice, not brilliance, but cowardice and grotesque sycophancy regarding those higher up on the authoritarian hierarchy, including chairpersons, deans, vice presidents, presidents, and chancellors.

At the state college where I taught five years, self-proclaimed and self-promoted as the “Leadership College,” which established a Leadership Academy, 99% of the professorate when confronted with blatant in-house corruption refused to “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all its ways.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, of course, wrote those famous words… and they are so powerful that each and every college and university in America ought replace their obscure and largely unread mission statements with them. Imagine all the trees conserved.

As a direct insult to Emerson's wisdom, all too many professors and administrators at that college and, no doubt, at many if not most other institutions of higher learning throughout the Nation, engage in an incredible amount of vacant jabbering. “Finally, I say, let the demagogues and world-redeemers babble their emptiness to empty ears,” had written the poet Robinson Jeffers. Even more significant, when, on those rare occasions, that institution was criticized, the office doors inevitably shut firmly with the hinges squeaking a spineless 'shhh.' Why such great fear to criticize the leaders of a public college, FBI's most wanted serial murderer Billy Bulger, brother of University of Massachusetts president William Bulger? In fact, why the great need for PR in higher education today? Why the need for lofty sobriquets such as the “Leadership College”? Why the secrecy of personnel files in academe? Why the cover-ups? Why did it take federal legislation to force colleges and universities to divulge crimes committed on their respective campuses? Evidently, accountability never comes from within.

Hopefully, some college and university deans and presidents in the country must surely encourage professors to follow Emerson's wisdom and be apt to hire professors with proven records of doing just that. Hopefully, but who and where are they? “Self-Reliance” could replace those lofty and at times arrogant mission statements that professors spend so much time enacting and so little time applying. “I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions...” wrote Emerson. Badges, names and dead institutions? Professors ought stop calling each other Doctor. It's not only pretentious and embarrassing, but is also an integral part of that ivory wall of hocus pocus that needs to be razed. “Money is the price of life,” wrote Emerson. Many academics could benefit by contemplating that statement. Salaries, salaries, salaries, not truth, truth, truth has always been the war cry of the large majority of academics I've known. Even at this very writing, the state-college standardized academic careerists in Massachusetts are once again on the salary warpath. Indeed, they're now 'holding out' by not holding meetings, department or faculty. If somebody could only make those academics contemplate the salary I was earning, $850 per semester, at the local adult education center for teaching two evening courses. If somebody could only push their noses into inner-city poverty. Other traits that characterize the standardized academic careerist include the utter lack of compassion regarding terminated colleagues whose careers corrupt administrators systematically destroy. Apathy, sometimes parading as intellectual aloofness, especially regarding campus free speech, free expression, just procedures and evaluations, equality of treatment and other such issues that should be extremely important at institutions of higher learning, is also characteristic, as are lack of sharing regarding special programs, grant monies, extra-pay courses, etc., and deviousness regarding special favors. What is pitiful regarding these traits is that many professors will probably agree that their colleagues can be that way, but will rarely envisage themselves as standardized academic careerists. Nat Hentoff, ardent critic of higher education, posed the question: “What caused the ivory tower to become such a snakepit?” Well, Mr. Hentoff, the answer is quite simple: snakes and rats.

There is great urgency to redefine what a professor should be, certainly not a combination of the aforementioned traits. The perversion of process, secrecy of procedure, and rigid hierarchy result in the standardized academic careerist. To change the nature of the beast is absolutely crucial. If no change occurs, colleges and universities will continue on their merry paths producing technologically proficient, intellectually deficient, networking, and group-thinking blind patriots, rather than responsible citizens of democracy.

What needs to be done? First, replace the verbiage-packed mission statements that tend to be nothing but PR garbage with clear statements on the professor's responsibility to uphold and fight for truth and justice on his or her respective campus. Interestingly, the National Education Association devoted its December 2000 issue propaganda bulletin, Advocate, to “Academic Honesty.” Shamefully, though unsurprisingly, the entire emphasis was not on professor dishonesty, but rather on student dishonesty! Next, create on-going mandatory discussion workshops around the theme of the professor's responsibility. Preventing the Nation's various faculty union associations from fighting such a proposal tooth and nail, as they generally seem to do regarding any effort to viscerally reform the System, will not be easy. Is it not curious that professors never take such courses or workshops? Why do the Nation's teacher certification programs not include them? Something desperately needs to be done to stem the grotesque apathy of the large majority of the Nation's professors to truth and justice on their respective campuses.

While perusing the higher education want ads, I came across an ad for Christopher Newport University in Virginia, which boasted, “The University community abides by an honor code, and our students pledge not to lie, steal, or cheat.” Clearly, there must be a lot of lying, stealing and cheating, not only there, but everywhere to give birth to the idea of an “honor code.” Needless to say, I wrote Mr. Gallaer, Associate Vice President for Human Resources (I could not find email addresses for the university president or deans), asking the simple and logical question: “Do the faculty and administrators also take a pledge or would that be pushing it a bit?” Needless to say, Mr. Gallaer did not deign to respond.

What else needs to be done? Each college and university throughout the Nation must, in accord with the supposed universal mission of Academe, that is, veritas, establish a center and obligatory courses devoted to American First Principles, free speech, free expression, free press, the right to face ones accusers, etc. Free speech is of prime importance because it enables democracy to survive. The question is; of course, just how democratic really are the nation's colleges and universities and the Nation itself? How has the repression of free speech affected the state of the democracy?

Other areas of pertinence in dire need of free and open discussion include the cancerous pervasion of the ostrich mentality in academe and society in general. Silence or omertà is a Mafiosi principle, yet has taken over all spheres of American life, especially academe, police forces, government, and even literature with regards criticizing the entrenched Academic/Literary Industrial Complex. The politically correct mindset must be discussed in the context where it distorts reality and dictates when its conscripts should stand by the truth, speak out against corruption and when they should not. Political correctness has come to mean truth some of the time, rather than truth all of the time.

Another occurrence that has been perverting the truth and reality is celebrity, which affects all spheres of American life, even poetry and government, and has had a most profound affect upon the Nation's psyche. We need to study why celebrity exists, how it exists, who pushes it, who profits from it, and especially, what grand purpose it serves. We need to study the phenomenon in which successive waves of hysteria unfurl upon the Nation, brainwashing and controlling the populace. I have been victim of these waves myself. I have been suckered in just like everyone else, which is why I am able to formulate this as a prime problem area. Celebrity clearly has a corrupting influence on the truth.

In any case, each of these subjects must be discussed openly in the context of immediacy in both time and place. In other words, all readings and discussions ought, in the name of pertinence and learning, revert whenever possible to campus events, including the firing, hiring, censoring, and evicting of professors, sexual harassment complaints, and all of the behind-the-scenes corruption that has characterized academe perhaps since its very inception. Clearly, immediacy assists learning by making the subject pertinent.

The need for such centers and courses is clearly underscored by the findings of the Freedom Forum of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University whose poll indicated that 53 percent of those surveyed believe that the press has too much freedom, a little under 50% of those responding to the survey said they did not recall ever having had a class in the First Amendment, only four percent rated their education in the First Amendment as "excellent," while 63% had said it had been poor or "only fair." Personally, in all my years of classes, I do not recall ever having had such a course, nor can I recall one professor or teacher ever talking about the supreme importance of the First Amendment.

Clearly, colleges and university administrators would rather not establish First Principles centers because such centers would serve to embolden and educate students and professors regarding basic and fundamental rights. Ignorance always serves the power structure, academic, corporate or whichever. An emboldened and educated student and professor population would inevitably threaten the power of administrators to dodge accountability and capriciously restrict basic rights on campus, which, according to Silvergate and Kors (The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses), is “the only major sector of civilian life in this country where not only is arbitrariness widespread, but where fair procedure and rational fact-finding mechanisms, with disturbing and surprising frequency, are actually precluded by regulations.”

Immediacy is important. We cannot continue to permit professors to teach courses on, for example, the Philosophy of Love when behind the scenes those very professors may be engaging in behavior that is anything but love. We cannot continue to permit colleges and universities to require readings such as Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" when they refuse to acknowledge and discuss on-campus enemies of the people. We can no longer permit professors who cannot critically think regarding their immediate surroundings to teach courses in Critical Thinking. Academe's great failing has always been refusal to debate and refusal to reveal the festering corruption behind its own ivory towers. One of my evaluators had actually castigated me in his evaluation for bringing in-house corruption to the attention of students. He was wrong. College students are not children. College professors must stop treating them that way. They must stop 'protecting' them from the sordid aspects of the very institutions that have taken charge of their education. These matters are crucial to the salvation of higher education. College and university presidents, who make speeches stressing truth and justice, while behind the scenes stand for anything but truth and justice, must be challenged by a new breed of courageous professors. The college presidents I've known didn't give a damn about the truth and justice. Indeed, they were hired because of fund-raising prowess and political connections, not because of personal integrity.

Reading Hentoff's Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee, I discovered a wonderful document, the Woodward Report, which was issued by Yale University regarding speech on campus. This report, which reflects an extraordinary mentality on the part of some of Yale's professors, should be mandated in all institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately, most of the latter would never issue such a report, preferring instead reports or memorandums that might outline whole panoplies of free-speech restrictions under the grotesque banners of CIVILITY or COLLEGIALITY, lofty terms that conveniently conceal corruption.

America has taken a frightening deviation from the principles expounded in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Corruption is on the increase in the Nation's prisons, police forces, corporations, government, colleges and universities. For this reason, courses on free speech, expression, liberty, justice, whistleblowing, the truth and reality need to be created, brought to the forefront, and made obligatory in all colleges, universities and perhaps even high schools. Courses on income taxes, basic legal rights, poverty, health care, and criminal justice should also form part of an essential core curriculum. The citizenry has become much too dependent on the services of money-hungry lawyers, income tax accountants and doctors.

Moreover, universities and colleges are in desperate need of enacting whistleblower legislation. Each needs to establish an Office of Independent Critic and Ombudsperson, who would receive complaints, make such complaints public and gather statistics regarding all grievances and arbitration hearings and make those statistics public, as well as all hiring and firing records. The academic code of silence needs to be destroyed, once and for all.

Professors and teachers, who teach such courses, should hold the truth and justice much higher than job security, grant monies, paid sabbaticals, early retirement, loyalty to power, collegiality, and civility. It will be difficult to find such individuals because college and university presidents, as well as high school principals, are adverse to hiring and tenuring them. This grave problem needs to be addressed and somehow resolved. The very criteria for hiring presidents and principals must be reviewed in this light. Fund-raising prowess must cease being the most important criteria. Intellectual integrity must replace it.

Let colleges and universities be poor and truthseeking, rather than rich and corrupt with mega-sized endowment funds. Resolving the problem of intellectually fraudulent administrators is the most crucial area confronting academe today, not remedial learning or multiculturalism. Yet it is not even being addressed and will only be addressed when the non-academic public becomes sufficiently angry and involved. Absolute obedience should cease constituting a prerequisite for employment and tenure in the Nation's institutions of higher learning.

The following list of essays, books, etc. might serve as a starting point for a course in American first principles and reality. They have confirmed my own experiences and thoughts. Many other works could surely be added. Underscore once again that professors of such courses must teach the works as fully relevant to the immediate surroundings, including the very institution. They must fully comprehend what Orwell meant when he wrote: “Even a single taboo [e.g., do not criticize the hand that feeds] can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind, because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought.”

First Principles centers when created should be open to the general public and provide concrete ways in which students and others might actively help return the Nation to the ideals stressed by the Founding Fathers. Educators must help students (and students, who tend to be much less fearful of the power structure, must help educators) to focus on points of corruption and deterioration in American society, including academe, prisons, police, justice, soft money, etc. Voting alone will change nothing. Writing ones congressperson will do nothing either. I've tried that and received a thank-you-for-your-support form response.

Finally, the creation of First Principles centers and courses constitutes a radical idea, as radical as James Madison's Bill of Rights, because it will threaten, and in fact its very purpose should be to threaten, the academic/authoritarian establishment. During my 14 years as full-time college professor, I never heard anybody suggest such an idea. It is time to put an end to the rule of the standardized academic careerist. It is time to put an end to the self-serving saurian bureaucratic structures of the Nation's public universities and colleges. Let the following list of works serve as a core, alternative, Critical Thinking reader and, for that matter, let the following replace the myriad dull unchallenging, unquestioning literary anthologies currently being usedand pushed in the nation's colleges and universities, raking in millions of dollars for the Nation's corporate book publishers, part of the ruling elite in the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex.

Reality check in the ivory tower (and secondary education):
-Total Chaos: Behind the Scenes of a National Blue-Ribbon High School, G. Tod Slone
-How Teachers Colleges Have Destroyed Education in America: Education's Smoking Gun, Reginald Damerell
-Acceptance speech (New York City Teacher of the Year Award), 1/31/90, John Taylor Gatto
-“Teaching Self-Censorship at Columbia,” Nat Hentoff, Village Voice 2/21/01
-The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, Kors and Silvergate
-“Tenured Weasels: Getting a Degree-But Not an Education-at Public Universities,” Patrick Moore (www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/ lcrumbley/sfrtas.html)
-The Goose-Step: Study of American Education, Upton Sinclair
-The Graves of Academe, Richard Mitchell
-How Teachers Colleges Have Destroyed Education in America: Education's Smoking Gun, Reginald Damerell
-Yale University's Woodward Report
-Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee, Nat Hentoff
-Imposters in the Temple, Martin Anderson
-Poisoning the Ivy, Michael Lewis
-The Fall of the Ivory Tower, George Roche
-Inside American Education, Thomas Sowell
-Scaling the Ivory Tower, Lionel Lewis
-Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education, Charles J. Sykes
-The Hollow Men: Politics and Corruption in Higher Education, Charles J. Sykes
-Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America, Page Smith
-Vamps and Tramps by Camille Paglia (especially “The Nursery School Campus: The Corrupting of the Humanities in the U.S”)
-Saints and Scamps: Ethics In Academia, S.M. Cahn.
-Academic Integrity and Student Development, W.L. Kibler et.al,
-“Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Student Evaluation of Faculty: Galloping Polls In The 21st Century,” Robert E. Haskell (200-page essay also on the Return to Academic Standards web site)
-The Conspiracy of Ignorance: the Failure of American Public Schools, Martin L. Gross
-Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen
-Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add, Charles J. Sykes
-American Education and Corporations: The Free Market Goes to School, Deron Boyles
-A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (e.g., “The Public-School,” “The War upon Intelligence,” and “The Golden Age of Pedagogy”), H. L. Mencken

2. Reality check: society, literature, the truth, justice, universe, etc.
-“Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau
-“Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
-An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen
-“Prevention of Literature,” George Orwell
-Voyage au Bout de la Nuit, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
-“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” Frederick Douglass
-“1978 graduation ceremony address to Harvard University,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
-“The Case for Literature” (Nobel Lecture-1999), Gao Xingjian
-“First Principles" (Writing in Restaurants), David Mamet
-“The Concord Principles: An Agenda for a New Initiatory Democracy,” Ralph Nader
-Sinclair Lewis, “Letter to the Pulitzer Prize Committee” (The Man from Main Street)
-“The American Fear of Literature” (Nobel Lecture-1930), Sinclair Lewis
-“Propaganda, American-style,” Noam Chomsky
-American Holocaust, David Stannard
-“Patriotism, a Menace to Liberty,” Emma Goldman
-“Préface,” Léo Ferré (http://le-village.ifrance.com/tom/preface.htm)
-The Sane Society, Eric Fromm
-“Vamos a menos,” Juan Goytisolo
-“Words from an Outcast of the Fourth Estate” and “Capture Him, Beat Him, and Treat Him Like Dirt,” Mumia Abu-Jamal from All Things Censored
-“Hemos llegado al fin de una civilización,” José Saramago, El País, 11/19/00
-“Hacks watching the henhouse,” Howie Carr, Boston Herald 5/27/01
- “Never Anything About Obstruction of Justice-Clinton's Deal: Justice Denied” by Nat Hentoff
-A Mencken Chrestomathy (“Bearers of the Torch,” etc..) by H. L. Mencken
-Interdit aux autruches (collection of Quebec essays)
-Open Letters by Vaclav Havel (e.g., “Dear Dr. Husak”)
-Corporate Cults by Dave Arnott
-In the Belly of the Beast by John Abbott
-La Liberté n'est pas une marque de yaourt, Pierre Falardeau
-“Key to Presidential Pardon Is Access,” by Peter Slevin and George Lardner Jr., Washington Post, 1/22/01
-“A Cheap Violin: Eighteen rules of journalism, as violated by The News & Observer” by John Yewell, The Independent Weekly (http://www.indyweek.com/durham/current/triangles.html)
-“Coulda Shoulda Woulda” by Wanda Coleman (L. A. Times, 4/14/02)

3. Socio-politically engaged poetry
-“Question au clerc du guichet” (“Ballade de l'appel”), François Villon
-Selected Poems (e.g., “Quia Absurdum,” “Advice to Pilgrims,” and “New Years Dawn, 1947”), Robinson Jeffers
-Le Temps de Parler (e.g., “Folie,” “Le Pouvoir,”and “La Vie volée”) and “Les Porcs,” Raymond Lévesque
-“The True Prison,” Ken Saro-Wiwa
-“The Hollow Men,” T. S. Elliott
-“The Unknown Citizen,” W. H. Auden
-“Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” Dylan Thomas
-“We Wear the Mask,” Paul Laurence Dunbar
-“La poesía es un arma cargada de futuro,” Gabriel Celaya
-“Romance de la Guardia Civil Española,” Federico García Lorca
-“El Crimen fue en Granada,” Antonio Machado
-“The Replacements,” “Termites of the Page,” and “How to Get Rid of the Purists,” Charles Bukowski
-“No Te Salves” and “Contraofensiva,” Mario Benedetti
-The American Dissident, a journal of dissident writing in the spirit of the Founding Fathers

4. Films
-The Thin Blue Line, directed by Errol Morris
-Free Speech for Sale, Bill Moyers
-Manufacturing Consent on Noam Chomsky
-The Insider
-“What's Happening to Free Speech?” John Stossel (ABC, 3/23/00)