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MICHAEL BLOWHARD reads an interview with Richard Rorty and mixes it up with the lefty humanities professors posting at the Crooked Timber blog. Quotable:

Let's skip quickly over Rorty's inabiility to conceive of critics of the academy who might not be handmaidens to evil. That's a small imaginative failure, easily forgiven. Let's also bypass Rorty's deep-seated conviction that no Republican can be a decent human being. Ooops, there go all the sweet and generous smalltown Republicans I grew up with; and there goes most of my family. Not a very pluralistic stance to take, especially for a man who has made himself well-known as an advocate for pluralism. Bypassing all that in any case, let me note down some of what Rorty freely admits to in the passage above:

* The softer departments in universities are heavily leftist.
* Many of these leftists have gone 'way too far with political correctness.
* The kids who are taught by PC leftists will be affected by the experience.
* Lit departments are in particularly ludicrous shape.
* Lit departments have overdone the reliance on Foucault, etc.
* Lit deparments these days turn out an amazing amount of facile, predictable, and over politicized hack work.

Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack