On Jul 5, 2008, at 8:15 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> 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.
Hmm, I always thought professor baiting assumed that the workers whose occupations you list in some sort of Whitmanic form are the real repositories of wisdom, and the profs are just a bunch of ludicrous snobs detached from real life. Like in the Charlie Daniels song.
Doug