I didn’t suggest you sample Thompson because he has a different POV than Johnson. I thought you would enjoy his prose and rhetoric. I’ve been nauseated by the boot licking and apple polishing KC receives in his comment section (I’m sure you can think of one such person). I’m an unabashed fan of his prose which suits my taste perfectly. Out of the fifty or so blogs I check he’s my favorite writer. Although I don’t agree with much Tenured Radical writes I also love her prose.

I agree that Thompson cherry picks his subject matter but I think that’s simply par for the course on the internet. I’ve come to realize that the internet doesn’t cater to the middle ground. Nixon’s silent majority isn’t well represented by bloggers or the communities that follow them. If you sitting on a trove of even handed centrist sites by all means suggest a few.

Yeah, I browsed a little more, and I agree that Thompson is a fine, engaging writer. He’s got a broader range than Johnson and more style and imagination. The parts that aren’t political I enjoy. On the more political side, what got my attention this time was two posts that take on Stanley Fish. In both cases he settles on one point to trash, and I find that pretty disappointing. Fish can be obnoxious and smug, but in both those articles, and in general writing about academic matters, the outrageous statements are balanced by clear and pragmatic distinctions.

It’s funny that you brought up Tenured Radical. What I’d like to find is a Tenured Radical from the Right—a writer with a good ear for what the other side is saying and some willingness to take on the sacred cows on her own side.

Most of the post is familiar hyperbole, and the comment thread is a DIW-style cheering section, also familiar. Actually, in the heyday of DIW I think there would be more real dissent in a comment thread that long. Maybe it’s just the “instapundit readers” he welcomes at the end. He’s not responsible for what his readers say, but since he chimes in pretty often he could put up some resistance to some of the vapid ravings. If he’s not bothered by the reflexive anti-academic opinions of people who are working from little but prejudice and resentment, I have to wonder if he has any interest in the health and intellectual integrity of academia or if its just useful fodder for a polemic.

I’ll never get past those mental fortifications to scam you, though.

To your point that KC finds it easy to read Holloway as a stereotype I agree but you don’t address the question of whether or not she conforms to the stereotype he has constucted. For me she’s a round peg that KC effortlessly hammers into a round hole. Why could this stereotype be in any way useful? Because it has predictive value.

When I fill my hard left professor worksheet (I keep a laminated copy in my desk at home) I find myself checking a lot of boxes when I look at Holloway. The list runs from some innocous items (not a republican) down the spectrum (a disdain for capitalism and opposition to Isreal) to items that to me are indefensible (support for Mumia Abu Jamal or Ward Churchill). Forget about the faculty at Duke and recall who came out publically against the players long after the case against them had collapsed(always willing to give an opinion without command of the facts). My list would include Claire Potter, Gail Dines, Jennifer Ho, Rachel Sullivan, Boyce Watkins, Barbra Bennet AG Rud and a few others. I don’t think you’ll be able to find any other proffesion so well represented.

Given the fact you are now covering an exchange between KC and a commenter about the proportionality of a single word in one of his posts I think it’s safe to conclude you’ve squeezed the available juice out of DIW. I suggest you try out David Thompson if you want to engage in the culture wars. Read his academia and postmodernism catagories for background. Thompson is a much better writer than Johnson and more of an interpreter than a compiler. Thompson and Johnson deal with the same themes from the same viewpoint but I think you’ll find much less to object to in Thompson’s rhetoric.

It should only take 2 or 3 hours to run through his archives. I’m guessing that you won’t agree with his POV but I think the quality of his arguments are what have been seeking.

I have addressed the question of whether or not Holloway conforms to the stereotype, in one of those long posts that’s too much trouble to read and respond to. I even boiled it down to a few main points, though Johnson has manufactured so many of his complaints against Holloway that any summary has to be selective. What I’ve found is that Johnson had to do a whole lot of whittling to get the peg into the hole. I’m sure some of the points I’ve made are arguable—it would be great to hear some real counterarguments. To say that she fails a checklist of ideological litmus tests is no counterargument, it’s just quick and dirty pigeonholing.

I’ll check out David Thompson—thanks for the link.

UPDATE: I did check out Thompson—see below.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i05/05b00101.htm

Duke had a plan, not a crusade, and this article gives the results and some other results from other colleges. It appears there have been some positives as well as some negatives as far as the goal Duke is striving for. I don’t know but I can assume from KC’s rant that his main complaint is that he is against Duke having this goal in the first place. Maybe that is the real “crusade” here?

Thanks for the link. The whole article is worth a read.

Yes, I think it’s fair to say that one thread of DIW is a crusade against “diversity” hiring. One of Johnson’s main claims is that it fosters poor quality scholarship. It’s a line of criticism that could be developed in a reasonable and constructive way, something he’s capable of doing when he wants to. More often it comes loaded with rhetoric—that’s the crusading. It goes without saying, or it least it should, that the crusading isn’t limited one side of the “diversity” issue.