Varia

Amherst beat Williams in the 119th meeting of the Biggest Little Game in America to take the Little Three crown. The ancient rivalry is known for a postgame walk to the barbershop taken by Williams players after a win. ESPN and Football Digest have more on the storied small-college series.

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Beautiful Atrocities' take on grieving widow Suha won't sit well with a chivalrous defender of the Palestinian Imelda Marcos. (Via Llama Butchers)

After reading Andrew McCarthy, Alan Dershowitz and Max Boot on the late Arafat, it's hard to comprehend the soft violin music emanating from Rome and from Canterbury at the passing of the architect of so much human misery. Bosch, I say.

Christopher Johnson has more.

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Standards keep slipping: The NYT's website notes the passing of rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard, but one looks in vain for the honorific "Mr. Bastard." You have to go to Power Line for that.

Meantime, some Old School Yalies are bemoaning what's been done to their club.

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The Beyond Red & Blue analysis of the 2004 vote shows Appalachia has become the most Republican region in the country, particularly interesting in light of a recent piece on the enduring impact of the Scots Irish on American politics and culture.

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Who Gets the Academic Job? The Crack Young Staff introduces a new parlor game. (The answer here.)

Meantime, a remarkable piece at the Chronicle of Higher Ed on the leftish groupthink that prevails in academia explains why the recent election results caused spilled lattes in faculty lounges from Brunswick to Palo Alto.

The first protocol of academic society might be called the Common Assumption. The assumption is that all the strangers in the room at professional gatherings are liberals. Liberalism at humanities meetings serves the same purpose that scientific method does at science assemblies. It provides a base of accord. The Assumption proves correct often enough for it to join other forms of trust that enable collegial events. A fellowship is intimated, and members may speak their minds without worrying about justifying basic beliefs or curbing emotions.

The Common Assumption usually pans out and passes unnoticed -- except for those who don't share it, to whom it is an overt fact of professional life. Yet usually even they remain quiet in the face of the Common Assumption. There is no joy in breaking up fellow feeling, and the awkward pause that accompanies the moment when someone comes out of the conservative closet marks a quarantine that only the institutionally secure are willing to endure.

Writer Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory who by now probably has been crossed off the Lacanian Society invite list (not necessarily a bad thing), closes with a sensible recommendation:

There are no administrative or professional reasons to bring conservatism into academe, to be sure, but there are good intellectual and social reasons for doing so.

Those reasons are, in brief: One, a wider spectrum of opinion accords with the claims of diversity. Two, facing real antagonists strengthens one's own position. Three, to earn a public role in American society, professors must engage the full range of public opinion.

Finally, to create a livelier climate on the campus, professors must end the routine setups that pass for dialogue. Panels on issues like Iraq, racism, imperialism, and terrorism that stack the dais provide lots of passion, but little excitement. Syllabi that include the same roster of voices make learning ever more desultory. Add a few rightists, and the debate picks up. Perhaps that is the most persuasive internal case for infusing conservatism into academic discourse and activities. Without genuine dissent in the classroom and the committee room, academic life is simply boring.

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Apropos of previous posts: Amherst College is building a new natural history museum. A closing reception was held in March at the old Pratt Museum, which counts among its objects a rather nice Irish Elk.

The Pratt Museum houses the world's largest collection of dinosaur footprints, and I post a link to the Edward Hitchcock Virtual Ichnological Cabinet because the name is so wonderful.

Meantime, Amherstiana offers a remarkable online collection of Lord Jeff ephemera that is interesting to non-alum as well as alum. Webmaster Brian Meacham also collects snaps of ballparks and coffee shacks.