ON BEING “THE OTHER:” Another example of academia’s diversity problem:

“So what’s it like to teach in a uniform?” asked the Post-Colonialist as he turned ever so slightly, revealing UC-Whatever on his nametag.

“Gee, I guess I’ve never thought about it. You first; what’s it like to teach in jeans and Birkenstocks?”

Silence (and no more Camembert on the plate); he has no answer simply because there could be no answer to such an inane question. Obviously the Post-Colonialist links his professional persona to his teaching and his research, not to his wardrobe. Who among us does not?

But the professional activity of academics that teach at a military school always comes second — if at all — to curiosity about the institutional aspects of our positions, especially in juxtaposition with the accepted archetype of the American professor, molded by the political activity of the sixties and cultivated by the visibility of the left-wing power structure within higher education.

“I think it would be far too stressful for me to teach children of Republicans,” the Multiculturalist commented over cappuccino in Padua, after expounding on profiling as a bigoted, narrow-minded policy of Eurocentrists.

Yeah, we wouldn’t want to stereotype people or anything.