Hey, kids! It's time again for the annual American Political Science Association convention! Be sure to bring lots of booze. You're going to need it.

Academentia Watch

Kathy Ferguson directs the "women's studies" program at the University of Hawaii, where she boldly goes where no man has gone before (i.e., she teaches a course titled "Political Theory in Star Trek").

Damn Klingons.

When we heard about this panel, we suspected the APSA of partisanship--after all, would the group have entertained the notion that President Clinton was a fascist or a communist? Well, maybe it would have. The "chair" of the panel, Dvora Yanow of Cal State Hayward, turns out to have written a book chapter in 2002 (with co-author Hugh Willmott) that seems to argue just that:

In the arena of national politics, for example--Clinton in the US, Blair in the UK, and others--a postmodern play of images offers competing representations of, and promises to, the middle ground as established divisions between "left" and "right" have been de-differentiated, with attendant confusion and uncertainty for those wedded to their respective (individualistic and collectivistic) beliefs and values.

This loss of established bearings and associated ethical disorientation can produce a moral vacuum in which a fascism of the centre (!!! - F.G.) can take hold. Fascisms of the right and left are well documented. Their seductive and destructive power has been demonstrated repeatedly during this century. Currently, both stand discredited, lending greater appeal to the seemingly moderate ideas of the centre--the Third Way. The door is then opened to an authoritarianism, if not a fascism, of the centre, in which ideas of moderation and progress, based upon commonly accepted, uncontested (and uncontentious) values, become the new, and seemingly the only, basis for government.

That s.o.b.! That sounds suspiciously like my Grand Theory of the Totalitarian Middle, if I am not mistaken. Anybody out there know if I can copyright this blog crap?

This is not exactly deathless, or even clear, prose, but it's not bad work for a piece of furniture. In any case, fascism seems to have become the academic equivalent of another well-known F-word: a generalized expletive that only infrequently bears any relationship to its original meaning, though it retains the power to shock those who are unaccustomed to its overuse.

For our part, we are not shocked. Then again, we pretty much stopped taking the academic left seriously while we were still in college.
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today for the heads up.)