The Sound of a Loon
Opening line, we get pigeonholed:"Professor David Beito is a libertarian, Professor K.C. Johnson a conservative whose job I defended when it was under attack, and Professor Ralph Luker a liberal who is obssessive [sic] in his hatred for myself and this website." My red pencil trembles already to correct the spelling, the grammar, and the facts. Er, David, that would be"for me" and I haven't been a professor for over 10 years. Whether KC is a" conservative" and I am a"liberal" depends on context (something too complex for polemical purposes, I understand).
"The three put up a resolution at the rececent [sic] convention of the American Historical Association which would have simultaneously condemned my Academic Bill of Rights and speech codes. The leftwingers who run the AHA of course support speech codes because they are totalitarians."
A word like"totalitarian" rolls lightly off the tongue of a retired Stalinist; but who are you kidding, David? Our recent presidents: Barbara Weinstein, Linda K. Kerber, James J. Sheehan, Jonathan Spence, James McPherson, Lynn Hunt, William Roger Louis – not a card-carrying totalitarian, like yourself, among them.
"Beito, Johnson and Luker turned a blind eye to the fact that the AHA leadership is an enemy of academic freedom because it is professionally easier to attack an academic pariah like myself than to take on the powers responsible for the stifling of intellectual diversity and the debasement of the intellectual curriculum in the university."
Nor are they, like yourself, enemies of academic freedom. They've given their careers to defending it. And, cut to the chase: if I'm no professor, David, you're no"academic pariah." You're just a"pariah" because, like some other aggrieved" conservatives," you never did the hard work it takes to become an"academic." To be sure, academe brought much of this on itself by waiving the requirements for folk like Ward Churchill to become tenured professors, but you merit no more serious consideration than they do.
"I am impressed by the hypocrisy and intellectual cowardice of Beito, Luker and Johnson as revealed in this explanation of their condemnation of the Academic Bill of Rights at the AHA convention. The main AHA resolution, which all three voted for, claimed that the ABOR would impose political standards on the curriculum and hiring process. This was a lie."
Ooops, you lied on your way to accusing us of lying! KC couldn't have voted for the AHA resolution. He didn't even vote for the resolution we proposed because he wasn't at the convention. I've told you before and repeat it here: Give yourself a salary cut and hire some fact checkers so you won't lie on the way to accusing us of lying!
Your defense of ABOR against our criticism is a sham. Internal mechanisms for student grievances against professors are already in place. As if we needed to become even more litigious, your legislation would encourage students to take those grievances into the courts. No academic conservative would encourage that consequence.
So, let me count the epithets:"totalitarian,""hypocrite,""intellectual coward,""liar," etc. Yes, I'd say you've got a pretty good mirror image of yourself.