Len Adleman (of R,S, and A): Universities need a little Limbaugh

[Tyler Durden]

Now that was an enjoyable and even marginally relevant piece of RAHspam.



>From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
>To: cryptography at metzdowd.com, cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net
>Subject: Len Adleman (of R,S, and A): Universities need a little  Limbaugh
>Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 14:39:56 -0400
>
>A little  humor this morning...
>
>He's right, but it's still funny.
>
>Expect Dr. Adleman to be asked to turn in his Liberal Secret Decoder Ring
>forthwith...
>
>Cheers,
>RAH
>-------
>
><http://www.dailynews.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,200%257E20951%257E2872499,00.html>
>
>
>
>Los Angeles Daily News
>
>
>Universities need a little Limbaugh
>By Leonard M. Adleman
>
>Saturday, May 14, 2005 - Pomp and circumstance. Black-robed students
>receiving diplomas as proud parents look on. Distinguished members of
>society receiving honorary degrees and offering sage advice to ''America's
>future.''
>
>  It is commencement time again at the nation's universities.
>
>  This year I nominated Rush Limbaugh for an honorary doctorate at the
>University of Southern California, where I am a professor. Why Limbaugh _ a
>man with whom I disagree at least as much as I agree? Here are some of the
>reasons I gave in my letter of nomination:
>
>  ''Rush Limbaugh has engendered epochal changes in politics and the media.
>He has accomplished this in the noblest of ways, through speech and the
>power of his ideas. Mr. Limbaugh began his career as a radio talk-show host
>in Sacramento in 1984. He espoused ideas that were conservative and in
>clear opposition to the dominant ideas of the time. Perhaps because of the
>persuasiveness of Mr. Limbaugh's ideas or because they resonated with the
>unspoken beliefs of a number of Americans, his audience grew. Today, he has
>the largest audience of any talk show host (said to be in excess of 20
>million people per week) and his ideas reverberate throughout our society.
>
>  ''Mr. Limbaugh is a three-time recipient of the National Association of
>Broadcasters' Marconi Radio Award for Syndicated Radio Personality of the
>Year. In 1993, he was inducted into the National Association of
>Broadcasters' Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
>
>  ''In 1994, an American electorate, transformed by ideas that Mr. Limbaugh
>championed, gave control of Congress to the Republicans for the first time
>in 40 years. That year, Republican congressmen held a ceremony for Mr.
>Limbaugh and declared him an 'honorary member of Congress.' The recent
>re-election of President Bush suggests that this transformation continues.
>One of Mr. Limbaugh's major themes through the years has been liberal bias
>in the 'mainstream' media. His focus on this theme has made him the target
>of incessant condemnation. Nonetheless, he has persevered and it now
>appears that his view is prevailing. As the recent debacle at CBS shows,
>the media is in the process of major change. Ideally, the American people
>will profit from a reconstituted media that will act more perfectly as a
>marketplace for ideas.''
>
>  But there is a bigger reason why I support giving him an honorary degree:
>Because I value intellectual diversity.
>
>  Regrettably, the university declined to offer Limbaugh a degree. As best 
>I
>can determine, no university has honored him in this way. On the other
>hand, such presumably liberal media luminaries as Dan Rather, Chris
>Matthews, Judy Woodruff, Bill Moyers, Terry Gross, Paul Krugman and Peter
>Arnett have received many honorary degrees from the nation's universities.
>
>  Now before you label me as a right-wing ideologue, let me present my
>credentials as a centrist. Limbaugh has well-known positions on the
>following issues: abortion, capital punishment, affirmative action, prayer
>in school, gun control, the Iraq war. I disagree with him on half of these.
>
>  But intellectual diversity has all but vanished from America's campuses.
>We are failing in our duty to provide our students with a broad spectrum of
>ideas from which to choose. Honoring Limbaugh, or someone like him, would
>help to make the academy more intellectually diverse.
>
>  The great liberal ideas that swept through our universities when I was a
>student at Berkeley in the 1960s have long ago been digested and largely
>embraced in academia. Liberalism has triumphed. But a troubling legacy of
>that triumph is a nation whose professorate is almost entirely liberal.
>
>  In the 29 years I have been a professor, I do not recall encountering a
>single colleague who expressed conservative ideas. The left-wing
>accusations of Ward Churchill (Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Alfred
>University, 1992) are not the problem _ the problem is the scarcity of
>professors who are inclined to rebut them. It is time for the nation's
>universities to address this disturbing situation.
>
>  So I hereby extend my nomination of Limbaugh to all universities. It 
>would
>be a refreshing demonstration of renewed commitment to intellectual
>diversity if next spring we hear Dr. Limbaugh's words as our graduates ''go
>forth.''
>
>Professor Leonard M. Adleman is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer
>Science at the University of Southern California.
>
>--
>-----------------
>R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
>The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
>44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
>"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
>[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
>experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'