Posted on 05/29/2004 7:07:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
The Ivory Tower of Babel
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 28, 2004
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Mike Adams, the author of Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor.
FP: Welcome to Frontpage Interview Dr. Adams, it’s a pleasure to have you here.
Adams: Thank you. The pleasure is mine.
FP: The title of your book, “Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel” is quite interesting. What made you choose that title?
Adams: When I select a title for an editorial or for a book, I like to pick something that grabs the reader’s attention. However, this particular title was selected for more than effect. Our system of higher education has been consumed with socialist, Utopian policies for so long that, in my opinion, it is beginning to break down into complete chaos. Like the Tower of Babel story of Genesis, no one seems to be speaking the same language on college campuses today. Anyone who has experienced university speech codes or dealt with campus political correctness can identify with the theme of my book.
FP: The first section of your book includes a series of letters you wrote as an untenured professor. In your book you say that you did not send most of them. Now that you have tenure, you have obviously published the letters. Do you think that your experiences highlight the need for a permanent tenure system? Are universities so infested with ideological bigotry that you could not survive without tenure?
Adams: It is certainly true that I was afraid to send most of those letters before I became tenured. However, you may be surprised to hear that I do not support tenure. By way of brief example, those reading my book will learn about a professor who accused her chair of sexual harassment in a department meeting. After the charges were deemed unfounded, she accused him of a felony criminal charge out of sheer malice. The university is crawling with lunatics who believe that they can do whatever they want with impunity. That is because they have tenure. And that is why I oppose tenure. Some would say that I would lose my job without tenure but I don’t think that’s true. Since I write a national column, I doubt that the university would want to take me on in the national press after firing me. And I certainly doubt that they would want to make a part-time columnist into a full-time columnist. Giving me more time to criticize the UNC system would be profoundly unwise.
FP: The final section of your book details a 2001 free speech controversy that we covered on Front Page. Could you tell us something about that controversy? Why did you decide not to sue your university after they read your personal emails? What has happened to the leftist administrator and her daughter, the student who sparked that nationally covered controversy?
Adams: Those who read the book and write me say that the final section is the best. They also say that it made them the angriest. I was thrilled when Front Page covered this post- 9/11 controversy that started when a university administrator’s daughter (also a student) wrote me an angry email four days after the attacks of September 11th. While using the First Amendment to blame the attacks on the US and to call George W. Bush an “illegitimate President” appointed illegally by a “reactionary” Supreme Court, she became emotionally unraveled when I responded to her message. The simple act of stating that the constitution protected her speech just as it had protected “bigoted,” “unintelligent,” and “immature” speech for many years caused her to scream “defamation.” This was despite the fact that she had been the only recipient of my message at the time she began to make this charge. Later, the university did read some of my personal emails over my vocal objections in order to see whether they should be handed over to my accuser. That was mild compared to what she had asked the university to do; namely, to hand over a week’s worth of my emails for her personal inspection.
Front Page, Fox News, US News and World Report, Rush Limbaugh, and Neal Boortz helped hand the university a well-deserved black eye before all was said and done. If I had it to do all over again, I would have taken the university on in the court of public opinion and in a court of law. As for the student, she has graduated. As for her administrator/mommy, she is currently being replaced.
FP: Now that you are touring the country to promote the book, you have an opportunity to speak on a number of college campuses. Are the problems you describe as bad in other places or is there just something in the water in North Carolina?
Adams: I was once convinced that the UNC system was leading the country in terms of academic lunacy but now I’m not so sure. When I speak at other campuses I hear the same kinds of horror stories from students, and occasionally from professors. The emails I get from around the country also reveal that the tactics of the academic Left vary little from campus to campus.
FP: You spend a lot of time criticizing higher education, particularly along the lines of diversity and free expression. What solutions to you advocate?
Adams: I would urge Front Page to continue to promote the academic Bill of Rights. I would also suggest two other approaches. First, there is always humiliation and ridicule. While we still have a First Amendment we must use it to expose the academic Left’s assault on freedom of expression. They simply cannot defend in public all that they try to do in private. My email controversy is a perfect example. Ben Shapiro’s new book “Brainwashed” is also a great example. My favorite portions of his book were his professor’s quotations taken right from class notes. The next time your professor compares George Bush to Adolph Hitler or says that it is morally permissible to kill infants with birth defects just convert the notes to a “letter to the editor.” Students should have fun while they are in college. If your university spends all of its speaking funds on Democrats, publish the names of the speakers and the amount of taxpayer money used to bring them to campus. Donor boycotts will follow until the university gets the idea.
Secondly, and more seriously, we need litigation to solve some of the problems I describe in my book. Last year a student Christian organization at UNC-Chapel Hill was told that they had to remove a portion of their constitution saying that members must “believe in God” because such a requirement would be “discriminatory.” When threatened with de-recognition and withdrawal of SGA funding the students capitulated. That was wrong. They should have sued the university. That kind of totalitarianism must be attacked in both the court of public opinion and in a court of law.
FP: In one article in this collection of your articles, you take some shots at Cornel West for his defense of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Tell our readers about your criticism of the “scholar.”
Adams: I can hardly muster the words to describe the idiocy of Cornel West. I think that the quotes I include in my book sum things up pretty well. The real question about Cornel West concerns his ties to homicidal racists and genocidal anti-Semites. The very idea that he can get $12,000 per speech on college campuses is a disgrace. If I had ties to David Duke, my speaking career would be over at public universities. The fact that West continues to be a favorite speaker at public universities is cause for great concern. I think it shows that anti-Semitism is alive and well on our college campuses and we need to do something about it. Given his former ties to Khalid Muhammad, should we not consider West to be an anti-Semite? And given those ties, how can he lecture us all on the perils of racism in America? I wish that West would stop scratching his beard, whispering, and rocking back and forth like a heroin addict in an all-night jazz bar and just answer some simple questions. Are you an anti-Semite? If not, why do so many of your friends seem to hate Jews?
FP: Indeed, and why do so many leftists hate Jews? Anti-Semitism has clearly become the new call of the Left and it explains why leftists and Islamists now have so much in common. Why do you think anti-Semitism is so chic now amongst leftists – especially on campus?
Adams: That is the toughest question you could have possibly asked. I know that anti-Semitism is more chic than ever among academics but I will never be able to explain its persistence throughout time, not just in academia but in the world at large.
The surest sign that anti-Semitism is on the rise is the recent increase in accusations of anti-Semitism by the university Left. The week that Mel Gibson’s “Passion” debuted, our university hosted a talk via satellite by Minister Louis Farrakhan. Local members of the Nation of Islam were on campus raising funds for slavery reparations. That week there was plenty of talk about anti-Semitism on campus. None of it was directed towards Farrakhan. It was all directed towards Gibson. The recent effort of the Left to project its anti-Semitism on conservative Christians has reached Orwellian proportions. Israel’s supporters flocked to see the “Passion” while its detractors manufactured false claims of anti-Semitism. The free pass they give to Farrakhan is not born of ignorance. It is no accident.
Before I leave the topic of my book, “Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel,” I would like remind readers of its reference to Chapter 11 in the book of Genesis. If you turn to the very next chapter of Genesis, you will encounter an interest verse saying that God “will bless those who bless the Jews and curse whoever curses the Jews." (Genesis 12:3). Look at the history of Spain and Germany and the present condition of the Arab world. I can’t explain the origins of anti-Semitism but I do know its consequences. The same cannot be said of the university Left.
FP: Prof. Adams, it was a pleasure.
Adams: Likewise Jamie.
I'm going to buy his book.
BTT
FYI!
I am definately going to read the book. Thanks!
Anytime someone is quoting a source to someone else, they frequently change the pronouns to nouns to make it understandable.
Additionally, this is a written transcript of works spoken verbally (I think). The quotes were added by the transcriber.
works = words.
You are way overreacting. He didn't add the quotes. Are you saying the verse does not say what he says it says? If you are, then you are the one twisting facts.
The sentiment of the quote does not appear to change the actual Bible verse though, does it? Most folks do interpret the actual Bible reference -- across different Bibles -- as meaning that God Blesses those who help Israel and curses those who cause trouble.
Now the Lord said to Abram,
Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father's house,
And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessingl
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
This blessing was passed on. (see Gen. 27:29) The great nation was Israel. All have been blessed through Christ (Acts. 3:8).
I emailed him about some horrendous episodes he wrote about my own branch of the university. He responded w/a personal email suggesting ways I could counter such undesirable practices.
TownHall.com carries his weekly column.
from the Harper Collins Study Bible, new revised standard version:
Genesis 12.3: "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse," referring to the "great nation" derived from the family of Abram, i.e., the Jewish people, it would seem to me.
What Professor Adams said was accurate. It wasn't a direct quote, but it was accurate.
He is very careful with his facts. You can see for yourself--read his columns at:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists
MY biggest concern, and one I think is less well known and understood, is the extreme views and ideology being foisted on our kids in the elementary through high school levels of public education.
Rarely a week goes by that our kids don't come home upset and seething over something stupid said, or not said, by one of the left-wing educators who seem to have taken over all of the U.S.'s educational system. We do a lot of de-briefing. Sometimes we take it on and try to do something about it, but if we took on every issue, it's all we'd get done.
It's indoctrination, pure and simple. And it is epidemic. Kids whose parents live in la-la land don't even realize it's happening. It's exploitation of the most vulnerable, something liberals are SO good at.
Thanks for the link. He is one of my favorite columnists.
"He responded w/a personal email suggesting ways I could counter such undesirable practices."
He's personally answered a couple of emails I sent him. He's a good guy.
I teach college English and I read his column, The "Coronation of the New Queen" (about the new UNC chancellor), to my class. In that article, Prof. Adams uses the phrase, "let them eat cake."
Sadly, about half of my students had no idea what that phrase refers to.
On a lighter note, several students were natives of China and they took the article quite literally, thinking that a queen actually was being coronated at the University of North Carolina, LOL!
And thanks for your Bible quotation, which was more thorough than mine. :)
He's one of my favorite columnists, too, because he's not just a pundit, he is actually "out there" in the trenches and reporting on what is happening.
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