Monday, March 13, 2006

Flares Puzzle Page

Here's a quote from Cathy Young's column today (via Instapundit):
IMAGINE IF you were in college and found out that the guy next to you in class had worked as a propagandist for one of the most oppressive regimes of modern times.

Here's the puzzle: how many different possible examples can you come up with for this? (With "modern times" allowed a little slack, say back to 1900.)

I've got three offhand:
  • You're at MIT taking Noam Chomsky's classes in linguistics
  • You're at Columbia taking Edward Said's Middle Eastern Studies classes
  • You're in a journalism class and Walter Duranty is a seminar speaker.

3 comments:

Rick Ballard said...

You're at Brandeis taking a philosophy course from Hert Marcuse.

You're at UC Santa Cruz taking Angela Davis' course in 'the history of consciousness'.

Unknown said...

You are either a student of Ward Churchill or Juan Cole, there are two.

truepeers said...

"worked as a propagandist" is a bit vague, but suitably interpreted the question effectively becomes what professors haven't propagandized for tyrants because they have been against the west and more or less for the Soviets and third world oppressors of various kinds.

My vote is for Mohammed Elmasry, engineering prof. at the University of Waterloo (Ontario) and head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, the Cnd. branch of CAIR. Elmasry has since backed down from his statement that he supports the killing of every Israeli over the age of 18 (since all civilians must do national service and can hence be considered military combattants). In any case, he supports the Palestinians, as do so many profs., and their society must be one of the most oppressive places on earth right now. The Moslem Brotherhood, father to CAIR, is also known as the Engineering Brotherhood - so many of the Arab "intellectuals" are engineers - many no doubt teaching in the west.