Professor baiting, it occurred t ome while half-dozing as Jan & I were driving back to Bloomington today, is a sort of twisted intellectual elitism, a huge over-valuation of "intelligence" as such. The hidden premise is that any smart person should know THE TRUTH, and if a smart person doesn't know THE TRUTH (The Truth according to the prof-baiter that is) then that person must be a deliberate fraud. Let me use a word I usually condemn: such baiting of The Academy manifests a seed of fascism in the baiter, a half-hiden lust for The Absolute Truth and The Absolute Good which can only be achieved throug Plato's Philosopher King, The Modern Caudillo. College Professsors, even tenured Full Professors, let alone the overwhelming majority of adjuncts or those on tenure tracks which will never lead to tenure, have as much right to be ignorant, angry, anxious, jealous,penny-pinching, politically indifferent, as Walmart clerks, systems analysts, copy editors, heavy-equipment operators, elementary school janitors, meter-maids, clerk-typists, auto mechanics, automotive engineers, postal clerks, firefighters, gearshaver operatives, coal miners, or mens-department managers. It is just another fucking way to earn a living, and until the carpers can build a left movement that can bring some freedom to the u.s. school system, they should shut their mouths about how terrible or mooderate or what-hav-you college professors are. It's a form of scabbing.
Carrol