Daily, I thank God in my prayers for growing up in an environment where it never occurred to anybody to visit any religious services or take me to visit them.

I wish people could stop saying in voices that drip with compassion, “It’s OK, you can try for a girl the next time around.” Sometimes, they continue in voices that betray how little they believe in what they are saying, “Boys can be good, too. . .”

I’m staring, horrified, on everything I need to do before leaving office today.

 

Don’t worry, I’m just being coy. I like being in demand.

It really is. I’m noticing that the percentage of students who cannot process the message that “Iberian Muslims did not force anybody to practice Islam. To the contrary, they fostered an environment of religious tolerance. They liberated the peninsula’s Jews from slavery and did not persecute them for practicing Judaism” is growing.

The message is delivered very clearly in the lectures abd in the textbook. Yet I’m alarmed by the growing number of people who hear what I say (and read what the textbook says) and transform it into “Iberian Muslims forced everybody to practice Islam. They enslaved the Jews and killed everybody who didn’t convert to Islam.”

Every year I get more students with this particular hearing problem. This year, I also got 2 students who interpret a mile-long list of what the Muslims contributed to the culture of Medieval Europe (sciences, architecture, philosophy, engineering, etc) as “The Muslims contributed nothing but torture and death.” This never happened to me before, and I’m traumatized.

It’s scary when you say something and people hear the exact opposite.

Blogger Z wrote a post suggesting that the latest anti-academia darling Rebecca Schuman “has taken a certain amount of abuse lately” and that Schuman’s assault on academia is “brave.”

Z is one of my favorite bloggers but this is a position I find very confusing. I have written about the disgust Schuman’s position makes me feel but, unlike Schuman’s excretions, my pro-academia pieces have never been picked up by CHE, Slate, or anywhere else. Still, Schuman’s Douthat-like rants are “brave” while my defense of how I make my living is “abusive.”

So here is a response I wrote:

What abuse has she taken exactly? Her piece is being published in places where neither you nor I will ever be invited and the absolute majority of comments is 100% positive. A couple of people dared to express disagreement on blogs with the readership which is a fraction of those in the places where she is cheered and celebrated. Is that abuse? Are we just supposed to shut up and meekly accept really offensive accusations? She insults an entire profession and then she is the one abused just because a few people try to defend themselves?

Her point of view – which is that the academia is a place of worthless suckups who do nothing of value and just spout incomprehensible verbiage – is completely mainstream. I see it expressed in the media at least once a week. She is only the most recent contributor to the meme that academia is a cult. We constantly hear this position expressed by people who warn Americans against sending their wholesome kids to this den of Derrida-spouting latte-chugging Marxist-worshipping brainwashers.

Since Schuman has obviously decided to leave academia, she is now trying to make a career in a different field. I suspect these publications are part of her career-switching move. I’m sure she will be very successful because she is hitting the sweetest spots of the very conservative mainstream media. If Murdoch hears of her, he will be in love.

Schuman will now move on to make good money bashing academics, while we will sit here, hearing about our jobs being denigrated and ridiculed, and with no single mainstream publication willing to publish what we have to say in self-defense.

By the way, when was the last time you saw articles praising the work of college profs anywhere but on obscure little blogs like mine?

The University of Minnesota at Duluth has fired Rod Raymond as wellness director over numerous charges that he denies, The Duluth News Tribune reported. During the last four years, two students filed sexual harassment complaints against Raymond and he was facing other, unspecified charges.

First of all, what the heck is a “wellness director”? Do people not realize how idiotic the title sounds? And what is this university doing, hiring all kinds of completely useless people who have nothing whatsoever to do on campus but molest students?

. . . or stay deathly silent as they always do when there are especially egregious governmental intrusions into the private lives of citizens:

Citing a morals clause in the woman’s divorce decree, a Texas judge has ruled that she cannot live with her new female partner and still retain custody of her children. The clause is common in divorce cases in Texas and other states. It prevents a divorced parent from having a romantic partner spend the night while children are in the home.

I wonder, is the reason why the US Libertarians are so indifferent to the governmental intrusion into the people’s sex lives that they have none of their own? Or none they find valuable enough to protect from said intrusion?

Once you start, it’s hard to stop. I’m reading a Spanish gossip magazine I bought in Spain to use in my classes. On page two, I discover a convoluted evo psych discussion of how pregnant women and women known to have children don’t attract men sexually because having sex with such women is perceived as disgusting.

And then Spain wonders why it has been in the grip of a demographic crisis for God knows how long.

In contrast, the US gossip magazine we discussed yesterday has a feature on how sexy and attractive pregnancy and motherhood have made a bunch of celebrities.

And then everybody wonders why the US is pretty much the only developed country with booming birth rates (and not just among the immigrants).