bia University for a cup of tea. I was informed by an aroused femalernthat no, I was not. The building was occupied. Lookingrnback at the situation, I realize now that I should have hammeredrnher, instead of meekly returning to my room.rnSoon the consequences of licensing passion and fanaticismrnwere made clear. The students at Columbia were punished byrnthe police. But the kicker was to receive in the mail a congratulatoryrnnote from my erstwhile college professor of Russian literature,rnwho wanted to congratulate me for the great job wernstudents were doing during the riots. I replied to him thatrnSwift, Pope, and Johnson would have rooted for the police, andrnso did I. Weren’t Swift, Pope, and Johnson deemed worthy ofrnstudy? The professor, a Soviet apologist and a superb lecturer,rnhad to break off his communications with me. I should notrnhave been surprised, after all. For I had long known that therncampus was something less than a font of wisdom, howeverrnmuch it flaunts the prestigious totems of culture.rnNot long after, I became a “professor” myself. That meantrndealing with students and professors who soon refused to finishrnthe semester in recognition of the shootings at Kent State. Butrnthe students got their credits, and the professors got their salary.rnSo much for the professoriate in its explicit political mode,rnand the only thing new about the story is that it is evenrnworse than imagined. But having jumped from the 60’s to thern90’s, I want to go back a bit to remark on other forms of radicalism.rnBombs in basements seemed a bit counterproductive,rnso subtler forms of mind-control and more insidious means ofrnpower had to be devised.rnProbably the most damaging force for divisive nonsense inrnthe last 30 years has been the major offshoot of the civil rightsrnmovement, feminism. Its major base has been the academy.rnIts effort has been to destroy the image of the American family,rnand therefore the constituent unit of society as we know it.rnThe power of feminism was early recognized by the federal governmentrnand by big business, and it has succeeded in rooting itselfrnin law and above all in thought, logic, and language.rnThough contemporary feminism can be compared to Maoismrnand to Scientology as a gnostic scam, its efforts have been devastatingrnat the grassroots level. The cliches of feminism havernpolluted the intellectual environment to a remarkable degree.rnThe other day, an otherwise intelligent professor told me thatrnher unsatisfactory salary made her a victim of “sex discrimination,”rnwhen in truth she had been treated straightforwardly byrna blind system. She could not be confused by facts, and isrnpresently seeking an unearned, undeserved raise which I amrnsure she will obtain. She will obtain it for two reasons. First, herrnsexual correspondent will help her politically to obtain it, andrnsecond, the system would be glad to institute yet another divisivernwedge of favoritism. Well, campus feminists are not sorncorny now as they were back in the eady 1970’s, when they actuallyrnsmoked Virginia Slims and flaunted copies of Ms. magazinernon their desks. Such radical courage and creativity camernprepackaged and showed that radicalism and consumerism hadrnquickly become identical in our vaunted marketplace. Thernwoman I have in mind is, I am told, a broadminded and activernheterosexual, but more than passe. Open lesbianism has longrnbeen the thing.rnWhen I used to read and hear a great deal of feminist blatherrnabout “sexism,” I knew that there was something true evenrnabout that self-serving propaganda. For I had known somethingrnpersonally about the sexual exploitation—the willing exploitation,rnof course—of female students by male professors.rnThe boys used to be quite open about it, joked about it at facultyrnmeetings, and so on. In effect, to some degree, the feministsrnwere right. Of course, they were not right enough. Thernaggressive professors were far from rapists. The college girlsrnwere asking for it, and they got it, sometimes in the professors’rnoffices. One such incident involved an ex-Luftwaffe instructorrnwhose knowledge of his scientific subject was 100 years out ofrndate. He smoked marijuana on campus, wore an earring, neededrna haircut, popped off about mysticism, and was indulged byrnall. A bit too strange to represent anything but himself, he wasrnnevertheless sustained by an institution of higher learning.rnAs boring as it is nasty, feminist agitprop is in fact the culturernof the campus, a functional substitute for thought and knowledge.rnIt serves a purpose. The fragmentation of knowledge hasrnleft the professoriate with little to hold it together except thernpolitical shibboleths we know as “political correctness,” whichrnis a phenomenon by no means restricted to the campus, forrnsuch a powerful political weapon and language is shared by thernpress and the government. The revolving doors of governmentrn—the Clinton cabinet, for example—speak to the identityrnof America’s ruling class with the worst elements of thernacademy.rnNot far behind “racism” and “sexism” comes “homophobia”rn—the “gay” rights movement being also a direct product ofrnthe late 1960’s that is now the establishment. Homosexuality isrnnow a sufficient qualification for employment and even forrntenure, and may soon be a necessary one. The continuedrnbreakdown of the citizenry into alienated and coddled subgroupsrnserves well the strategies of management. Government,rnbig business, and various churches are in accord with the academyrnon this principle, so that “queer theory” has long been recognizedrnas a legitimate arena of criticism and speculative philosophy.rnSurely we have all been edified to learn that byrnextraordinary coincidence the African-American, feminist, andrn”gay” movements in that order have all discovered extensive literaryrntraditions for themselves, which mandates substantialrncurricular recognition and therefore the subtraction of previouslyrnrecognized categories of achievement in writing.rnThe result is a Babel of discordance, itself contrived to promoternmanipulation. Reason is the first thing to be dispensedrnwith by the professors of it. When, for example, a religiousrnproselytizer walked onto a campus to distribute tracts, there wasrnstrenuous objection from an educationist who claimed thatrnsuch an intrusion was a violation of “the separation of churchrnand state.” He did not care that a private school is not the state,rnstill less that Christianity is a missionary religion. Nor did he acknowledgernthat he himself was ordained in a faith that deniesrnChrist’s divinity. In the contemporary academy, such a progressionrnof fallacies is routine.rnAttending a reading by a professor of literature of his own poems,rnI was rather struck by his announcement, “My subject isrnAmerican iniquity.” This lost him no points with his audience.rnHis poems seemed to be versified editorials on historical outragesrnsuch as social phenomena and wars, about which he gotrnquite exercised. He clearly thought that his rage at dead peoplerngained him moral credit, and his audience agreed with him.rnHis views of the world had been fixed in the 1930’s and for himrnthe Popular Front still lived, reified in his rhapsodies. For thisrnprofessor, poetry was an announcement of a lonely superiorityrnwhich itself ignited an impotent tantrum. For him, there wasrnno tragedy, only the rhetoric of personal feeling and cheaprn24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn