I was asked recently – by a child porn advocate, no less – why I write books with chapter titles that are so “offensive.” Citing two such chapter titles – “Fag Hags and Rainbow Flags” and “The Liar, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” – the child porn advocate asked what some of my fellow UNC professors had done to make me sound so “nasty.” I think the question is worth answering.
Put simply, I use provocative language in chapters (more often in columns) criticizing a small minority of my fellow professors for two reasons: 1) because they are proponents of fascism, and 2) because the UNC administration is too cowardly to confront fascist professors due to political correctness – the principal means of enforcing academic fascism.
Let me be more specific by relying upon a recent example involving one of our more authoritarian UNC professors.
Students taking a criminology course approached me after the professor banned (fortunately in writing) the use of the word “mankind” as “sexist.” Students were threatened specifically with point deductions for every single use of the word in exams or papers. Unfortunately, students did not stand up to the professor. Now I have learned that the professor has adopted another rule – this one banning use of the terms “BC” and “AD.”
The professor in question told the students that using “BCE” and “CE” is now a “convention.” Of course, it is simply incorrect to say that prohibiting students from using BC/AD and forcing them to use BCE/CE is a “convention.” It is a practice employed by a very small number of professors – most having strong antipathy towards Christianity.
Even if this unconventional BCE/CE timeline were now the convention it must have been initiated for some other reason. After all, one cannot say it was always the “convention.” It is likely that the original reason for this petty infringement on students’ religious freedom is one of the following:
1. Concerns over “separation of church and state.” It is clear to all but the least educated among us that the First Amendment Establishment Clause was meant to keep the federal government from establishing one particular Christian denomination as an official government church. The notion that BC must be replaced because the “C” stands for “Christ” is both historically and legally indefensible. But some professors actually have (or pretend to have) such an extreme interpretation of the Establishment Clause. This extremism even led several to say (in writing on the Faculty Senate mailing list) that the official university calendar had to use the term “spring holiday” in place of “Good Friday.” This was a stance they attributed to their “strong commitment” to separation of church and state.
That is why (in a future column) I will encourage students to sign up for the criminology professor’s class and defy her BC/AD ban. As of this writing, I have already obtained legal counsel for the students. That other part of the First Amendment mentioning free exercise of religion will be the subject of the federal litigation.
2. Questions about the historical claims of Christianity. It does not help matters that the professor responsible for the BC/AD ban also subscribes to wild conspiracy theories related to the origins of Christianity. She once told me that she thinks the Four Gospels were established as valid during a power struggle at the Council of Nicea. It is this kind of ignorance that leads to questions about whether Jesus was actually an historical figure. Those who tend to answer the question in the negative are naturally inclined to replace the BC/AD convention. Nonetheless, it is still the convention.
3. The Right to be Un-offended. Often, censors will ban words in an effort to preserve a so-called right to be un-offended. In the case of the BC/AD ban I have seen no evidence that anyone was ever offended by the now-banned letters. However, three students have now reported that they are offended by the ban itself. This is an example of how censorship generally backfires. And it is evidence that censors are often socially inept.
When one contemplates the ever-expanding list of words and ideas that are banned from college campus, the need for a caustic response is readily apparent. Strong language is often of good way of letting the censors know you won’t be intimidated. But more than strong language is needed in these times.
Just a few years ago I sent a warning to Georgia Tech letting them know they would soon be sued for a number of policies violating the First Amendment. They willingly abandoned an unconstitutional speech zone policy prior to litigation. But they chose to defend an unconstitutional speech code and unconstitutional manual telling gays which churches were “good” or “bad” on gay rights issues.
Because Georgia Tech did not take my warnings seriously they have lost more than just a pair of highly embarrassing First Amendment rulings. They are about to write a check for $300,000 to the attorneys I found to represent the students.
If some child porn advocate is reading this column he is free to consider it a “nasty” piece of journalism. If some UNC administrator is reading this column she is free to consider it a threat of litigation.
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Mike S. Adams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on October 30, 1964. While a student at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX, his team won the state 5A soccer championship. Mike Adams graduated from C.L.H.S. in 1983 with a 1.8 GPA. Mike Adams was ranked 734 among a class of 740, largely as a result of flunking English all four years of high school. After obtaining an Associate's degree in psychology from San Jacinto College, Mike Adams moved on to Mississippi State University where he joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. While living in the fraternity house, his GPA rose to 3.4, allowing him to finish his B.A., and then to pursue a Master's in Psychology. In 1990, Mike Adams turned down a chance to pursue a PhD in psychology from the University of Georgia, opting instead to remain at Mississippi State to study Sociology/Criminology. This decision was made entirely on the basis of his reluctance to quit his night job as member of a musical duo. Playing music in bars and at fraternity parties and weddings financed his education. Mike Adams also played for free beer.
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Upon getting his doctorate in 1993, Adams, then an atheist and a Democrat, was hired by UNC-Wilmington to teach in the criminal justice program. A few years later, Adams abandoned his atheism and also became a Republican. He also nearly abandoned teaching when he took a one-year leave of absence to study law at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1998. After returning to teach at UNC-Wilmington, Adams won the Faculty Member of the Year award (issued by the Office of the Dean of Students) for the second time in 2000.
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After his involvement in a well publicized free speech controversy in the wake of the 911 terror attacks, Adams became a vocal critic of the diversity movement in academia. After making appearances on shows like Hannity and Colmes, the O'Reilly Factor, and Scarborough Country, Adams was asked to write a column for Townhall.com.
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Today Mike Adams enjoys the privilege of expressing himself both as a teacher and a writer. Mike Adams is also an avid hunter and reader of classic literature. Mike Adams published his first book, Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel, in 2004. His second book, Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus, was published in 2008.
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