Perspectives

We are reminded in December by television commercials and billboards that this time of year, people not only celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah but also the African feast of Kwanzaa. But how African, or for that matter, how African-American is Kwanzaa?

Although the American Civil Liberties Union and its hand-maidens have been doing their level best to keep the Christmas spirit extinguished, the Catholic League reports that the spirit of the season is alive and well.

Penn State alumni urging the school’s president, Graham Spanier, to fire iconic college football coach Joe Paterno over the Nittany Lions recent losses may want to look at a bigger loser in University Park—the academic program.

Should the Pope Foundation agree to fund the proposed Western Civilization program, it would hardly be the first time a private foundation with a noticeable political agenda has ever given money to a program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

This is only the beginning of the Christmas season and already the anti-Christmas crusade is in high gear.

The New York Times obituary of our founder, Reed Irvine, contained so many inaccuracies that Accuracy in Academia’s president, James F. Davis, felt compelled to respond.

The bunch, which includes a few professors (a very few, let it be said), are arguing that my column is acceptable grounds upon which the university’s College of Arts and Sciences must desist in their efforts to propose a program in Western Civilization that would win an outside grant worth several million dollars.

The subsequent outcry that greeted news of this proposal was so vehement, and so vicious, that one would think the College had proposed replacing the Old Well with a statue of George W. Bush.

At least one outraged mother pulled her children out of Carrier Mills-Stonefort Elementary School (kindergarten through 8th grade) after being informed about the cross-dressing day.

A book review I wrote recently focused on a dissection of the work of historian Howard Zinn that appeared in the recently published Intellectual Morons by my predecessor at Accuracy in Academia, Dan Flynn. That review drew a sharp retort from one of Zinn’s many admirers in Academia.

West Chester (Pa.) University junior Tony Maalouf says, “In the last two and a half months, I was discriminated against more on this campus for being a College Republican than I ever have in my whole life for being an Arab.”

The election returns last week left many academics distressed.