Mary Grabar, Unlimited

The AJC has published editorials on the Georgia Tech issue: one by the two students bringing suit and one by the school's chair of the School of Modern Languages ("Shameful victory for the intolerant stings").

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0818edspeech.html


http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0818edtech.html

But protected speech of favored groups is so insidious that only newcomers and outsiders can recognize it in academia. Consider these two treatments of the literature of two different religious groups in a college textbook I am required to use.

To introduce students to Zuni ritual "poetry," one of which is the Scalp Dance, the editors of the Norton Anthology of World Literature write, "Bastions of spiritual and social autonomy, the pueblo communities, make a profound impression on the nonnative world by the strength of their traditions in an era of change; and of this there can be no more convincing proof than the ceremonial system of the Zuni pueblo with its annual cycle of drama, sacrifice, and oratory."
The "Scalp Dance," an example of this "ceremonial system," ends, “In a shower of arrows, / In a shower of war clubs, / With bloody head, / The enemy, / Reaching the end of his life, / Added to the flesh of our earth mother.” But the editors in the introductory pages instruct students that the purpose of this Scalp Dance was to “purify the warrior who had taken a scalp and to induct the trophy itself into the company of previously won scalps, regarded as rain makers.” The "Scalp Dance," presented as having profoundly religious meaning (it "purifies") has replaced the poetry of Christian writers in such anthologies.

Compare this introduction to the "Scalp Dance" to the introduction to Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
"Since Solzhenitsyn is such a dedicated anti-Communist and anti-Marxist, many Westerners have jumped to the conclusion that he is in favor of the Western democratic system. Such is not the case. He looks back to an earlier, more nationalist and spiritual authoritarianism represented for him by the image of Holy Russia." In a typical classroom where "authoritarianism" (Christian authoritarianism especially) is presented as the greatest evil, the discussion is predictable. But a writer like Solzhenitsyn who is explicitly moral is treated with suspicion and his views oversimplified. Chants of an illiterate group that describe their pantheistic beliefs as they celebrate with the scalps of their enemies are presented as profoundly religious poetry.

Oh, and do not be fooled by Professor McKnight's presentation of Goethe in his editorial in the link above; he implies that Goethe would be in favor of abortion rights and gay marriage. To the contrary! Today's Faust is the post 60s revolutionary, romantic out to "find himself." But this is a pact with the devil. Today's Gretchen is the young woman deceived by the Fausts around her. But instead of murdering her baby after its birth, she has an abortion.

Now back to preparing my own syllabi for the semester.