Conservative foundations and think-tankers and ideologues and busybodies have apparently decided to quit bitching about how The Liberal Academy is too liberal and instead are looking to toss heaps of cash at any perfesser who's willing to call Derrida a douchebag.
I applaud this development. Point the first: as the Bush administration is right now demonstrating in the style to which we have become accustomed, just because something has gone totally into the crapper is no reason not to flush it off in style, with scads and wads and gads of money. "Conservatism" is right now as discredited as Madame Blavatsky, though it probably smells even worse (like too many cats and too few litterboxes). This is uncontroversial, and indeed anyone who has given any thought to the wingnut jihad against academia over the years probably should have predicted that failure would lead inexorably to naked bribery. Point the second: Good news, I am way amenable to naked bribery! Yoo-hoo, wild-eyed survivors of the Olin Foundation apocalypse! Here I am! (Winks in manner of coquette.) I already teach The Great Works of Western Genius! Shakespeare, Plato, Melville. I'm on your side! (Blushes adorably)
Gimme ten thousand bucks and I promise not to tell the kids how many of those genius guys were fags. Gimme a grand more and I won't tell them what Joyce said he really wanted Nora B. to do for him. Or about Yeats's "operation."
When do I get my check?