Husband, father, and blogger, Michael Bérubé hardly looks like a menace to society. But is he? The professor of English at Pennsylvania State University at University Park is among those fingered by the conservative activist David Horowitz in his new book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery Publishing Inc.). Mr. Bérubé told us why he should be feared.
Q. What makes you so dangerous?
A. My slap shot.
Q. When do you use that?
A. I’d say anywhere from 25 to 50 feet away from the net.
Q. Is this in hockey?
A. Yeah.
Q. What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?
A. I assigned The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War to my “American Empire” class. My students and their parents were outraged and insisted that whoever wrote this book shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a college campus. [That would be Mr. Horowitz, who wrote the book more than 40 years ago, when he was a Marxist.]
Q. Do you plan to get a copy of “The Professors”?
A. I hope he sends me one. He’s sent me copies of his last six. I’ve got a whole small shelf.
Q. Have you read any of them?
A. I look into them, yeah. I didn’t read the one on reparations because I didn’t see the point. But Unholy Alliance [Radical Islam and the American Left], I’ve looked at that.
Q. What did you think?
A. Very crafty. Let’s put it that way.
Q. What’s your reaction to being included in this one?
A. Well, it depends on what my rank is.
Q. There’s no ranking system, I’m sorry to say.
A. There’s the decline of standards right there.
Q. Would you like to have seen some ranking?
A. Well, I’m honored, of course. But I need to know now whether I’m more dangerous than Cornel West. [Oddly, The 101 Most Dangerous Academics profiles only 100 professors, though Ward Churchill and Mr. West are named in the introduction and conclusion, making 102. Mr. Horowitz says the subtitle — including the “dangerous” part — was Regnery’s idea.]
Q. In “The Professors” you’re described as believing “in teaching literature so as to bring about ‘economic transformations.’”
A. I don’t just believe in teaching literature to bring about economic transformations. I’ve done it. I’ve been teaching William Dean Howells here at Penn State, and as a result, we have actually abolished capitalism in State College. It took two tries, but still, it can be done.
ALSO NAMED
To be sure, David Horowitz’s hit list of radical academics contains the usual suspects: the former Weather Underground couple William C. Ayers, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Bernardine Dohrn, of Northwestern University, and just about anyone who teaches from a Marxist perspective or in a Middle Eastern- or peace-studies program. But the list also holds a few surprises. Among them:
-
Lisa Anderson, dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, whose specialty is state formation and regime change in the Middle East and North Africa.
-
Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, whose research interests include Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnohistory, gender, and class dynamics in prehistoric societies.
-
Marc H. Ellis, director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies, at Baylor University.
-
Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, whose work focuses on the intersections of intellectual, political, and social history, and the history of race relations in the United States.
-
Jerry L. Lembcke, associate professor of sociology at the College of the Holy Cross, Vietnam veteran, and author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, which challenged the image of the spat-upon Vietnam vet.
Send ideas to short.subjects@chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com Section: Short Subjects Volume 52, Issue 24, Page A6