June 18, 2008

The Groves of Academe Contain Vast Petrified Forests

lincoln_bruce_print.jpg It is to laugh. The Chicago Tribune reports Naming U. of C. research center after Nobel Prize winner [Milton Friedman] has faculty split -- chicagotribune.com

Critics says proposed Milton Friedman Institute would be a right-wing think tank

In a letter to U. of C. President Robert Zimmer, 101 professors—about 8 percent of the university's full-time faculty—said they feared that having a center named after the conservative, free-market economist could "reinforce among the public a perception that the university's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity."

In the article the go-to guy for the potent quote is frequent Chicago Tribune contributor and U of C divinity professor Bruce Lincoln, a man whose claim to "diversity of thought" is the course he teaches on "The Theology of George W. Bush"

(Hint: He's agin' it. )

"It is a right-wing think tank being put in place," said Bruce Lincoln, a professor of the history of religions and one of the faculty members who met with the administration Tuesday. "The long-term consequences will be very severe. This will be a flagship entity and it will attract a lot of money and a lot of attention, and I think work at the university and the university's reputation will take a serious rightward turn to the detriment of all."

A center named after one of the towering intellects of the age is a "detriment to all?" Lets take a look at Bruce Lincoln's less than distinguished CV at the U of C :

"[Lincoln's] research tends to focus on the religions of pre-Christian Europe and pre-Islamic Iran, but he has a notoriously short attention span and has also written on a wide variety of topics, including Guatemalan curanderismo, Lakota sun dances, Melanesian funerary rituals, Swazi kingship, the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre, Marco Polo, professional wrestling, and the theology of George W. Bush. - Bruce Lincoln @ The University of Chicago Divinity School
When not busy with ADD, Lincoln evidently labors over his patented George Bush Decoder ring ( Code for Vote for Me: Speaking in the Tongue of Evangelicals) as his excuse for an original contribution to knowledge. Oh yes, he also believes that Christian fundamentalists are very bad and was shocked, shocked at Abu Ghraib:
Only when Seymour Hersh, our modern Ctesias, secured publication of these photos were the signs of hero and villain inverted, so that a broad audience could read the story as one of moral depravity. FROM ARTAXERXES TO ABU GHRAIB: ON RELIGION AND THE PORNOGRAPHY OF IMPERIAL VIOLENCE
You've gotta love a mind so colonized by lock-step thinking and swollen with self-importance that it could toss off the phrase "Seymour Hersh, our modern Ctesias." I can just hear the deep internal chortle when that one rolled out of the keyboard. He probably sipped sherry over it for months at the faculty club.

Having a drudge like Lincoln call to reject a real intellect such as Friedman only underscore the leading affliction in the Groves of Academe today: Intellectual Insanity, a dread disease that cripples and kills minds that might otherwise have been used to ask the universe: "Do you want fries with that?"

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Posted by Vanderleun at June 18, 2008 7:37 AM | TrackBack
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Yes, it could "reinforce among the public a perception that the university's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity," i.e., feminist Marxists, queer Marxists, environmental Marxists, Afrocentric Marxists, multicultural Marxists, deconstructionist Marxists, lesbian Marxists, transgendered Marxists, revisionist Marxists....

Posted by: Gagdad Bob at June 18, 2008 9:48 AM

I'm trying to figure out how to put a forest inside a grove.

Posted by: Mean Gene at June 18, 2008 1:57 PM

I'm trying to figure out how to put a forest inside a grove.

Posted by: Mean Gene at June 18, 2008 1:58 PM

Your points about the institute are worthwhile--but your cranky anti-intellectualism comes shining through in your last sentence. I thought you were FOR a diversity of ideas? You can't have it both ways.

Posted by: To Laugh at June 18, 2008 2:37 PM

Cranky? Perhaps. I am, after all, against a non-diversity of ideas... which pretty much sums up the "ideas" of this professor and his ilk.

It is, if you'll pardon the expression, only a diversity of no-diversity from the party line.

Having ideas both ways is, after all, true diversity.

Posted by: vanderleun at June 18, 2008 3:31 PM

"I'm trying to figure out how to put a forest inside a grove."

You use dwarf trees.

Posted by: vanderleun at June 18, 2008 5:05 PM

Shouldn't that be "vertically challenged" trees?

Posted by: Yanni Znaio at June 19, 2008 9:12 AM

What did Bruce Lincoln ever do to make him seem a valuable addition to an ideologically diverse faculty? He sounds like a dime-a-dozen, reflexive and intolerant professor, like 90% of liberal arts and social science professors. What does he add? Only more of the same drivel. What a waste of young minds to put them in the care of such sliminal minds.

Posted by: Al Fin at June 21, 2008 7:29 AM
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