What with all the hullabaloo surrounding The Guardian's recent discovery that International ANSWER is backed by (gasp) communists, this article seems apt, if only to demonstrate that our friends in the British press aren't the only folks who are somewhat clueless and out of touch.
Seriously, it is conferences like that one, coupled with bad publicity about draconian speech codes, course descriptions that defy description and general academic asshattery that will leave schools and universities open to the incursion of the private sector.
Getting misty-eyed about Marx and Lenin won't save education, kids. Try pulling your head out of your ass and teaching facts, not ideology. That would be a glorious revolution, indeed.
Posted by Big Arm Woman at December 1, 2003 03:23 PMDetroit was banning hate epitaphs, according to the paper.
Here lies wrapt in forty thousand towels
The only proof that Caroline had bowels
I assume would be an example. Alexander Pope, but Detroit has its own poets.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at December 1, 2003 06:47 PMActually, a couple of those courses look quite reasonable, but then Accuracy in Academia has never been interested in real inquiry or truth.
Posted by: Michael at December 2, 2003 07:47 AMMichael -
Full disclosure--I linked that site for the pr0n course. Pr0n! Whee!
I graduated too soon.
Posted by: BAW at December 2, 2003 08:22 AMBAW, have you read The Lecturer's Tale? If not, hie thee to Amazon and order it. It is a scream.
Posted by: Michael at December 2, 2003 09:51 AMI think "Cultural History of Rap" sounds pretty good compared to another course at UCLA:
8. History of Electronic Dance Music. (5)
Lecture, four hours. Survey of groove-based electrified dance music from its origins in 1960s pop and soul to the present, covering disco, house, techno, ambient, rave, and jungle. Emphasis on interaction of technology, musical structures, psychoactive drugs, and club cultures to induce "altered states" of musical consciousness; promise (versus reality of) political and spiritual transformation; electronic dance music as a new "art" music.