First, a shout out to Andrew DeCort! I am proud to say that Andrew was one of my students. It is such a wonderful situation when one can teach students and then they turn around and teach you! I have learned quite a bit from Andrew and I am still learning from him.

My thoughts today are ones that I had in mind before seeing the latest version of Andrew's email newsletter (titled "Neighbor Love"; you can find it here: https://andrew-decort.com​). But Andrew's post contextualizes the death of George Floyd in a very helpful way.

One might think that police brutality against black people in the United States goes back to the civil rights era, the Civil War, or even the advent of slavery in the 'New World'. But the reality is much deeper and more complex than that. The problem is that the United States is--and always has been--Zionist in nature.

The structure of Zionism is quite simple. It is the belief that God has authorized a given nation or people to conquer, steal, and kill. The passage that Andrew quotes comes from the Hebrew Bible. It may be one that you have heard or read before, but perhaps you didn't look at it carefully enough. In the passage, Israel is promised 

a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, 11 houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill . . . . 18 Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may go in and occupy the good land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give you, 19 thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has promised (Deuteronomy 6:10b-11, 18-19).

Israel is not merely being given permission to occupy this land filled cities and houses and goods but commanded to do so. To do anything less than conquering, killing, and destroying the people who currently occupy the land would be to go against 'God's will'. 

Is that perverse or what? But it is the very logic that enabled the European colonists to 'discover' the 'New' World and assume that they had a right to it. A great deal of American rhetoric stands behind this 'right'. Although there were formal treaties with the Native Americans, the reality is that these were continually broken and the people of various tribes were wantonly killed.

Black people are defined as 3/5ths human in the US Constitution and so they could be treated as less than fully human. Nothing has really changed since then. The advent of civil rights came about only by continual protest. However, even today, most white Americans do not really think that black Americans are 'just as good' as they are. 

The problem is that true equality is unbelievably difficult to think. To say that "Black Lives Matter" is not to say that white lives do not matter; it is to say that black lives matter just as much as white lives matter. 

But, if you look at that formulation, you can see right away that it's not right either: for it still privileges whiteness--in the same way that the statement "women are just as good as men" privileges men over women. Do you see how difficult it is to think equality rather than merely mouth the words of equality?

The problem with that Deuteronomy passage is that it instructs the Israelites to take what is not theirs and to kill all those who occupy 'their' land. The 'proof' of their righteousness is that they are successful in killing and conquering. It is very difficut to unmask this logic because it is fully self-reinforcing and entirely circular. By the way, Andrew does not mention anything about when Deuteronomy was written. While this is not perfectly clear, it is definitely long after the 'fact' of taking over the promised land. In that sense it is 'a justification after the fact'. Convenient.

But this kind of justification for thinking one is better than other people comes out in so many different ways. American Evangelical talk about 'family values' is really just code for both 'me and my white family' and 'straight people like us'. You queers might be allowed to exist in our little world, but we know we are better than you. Even laws that allow queers 'equal rights' have the same kind of logic that privileges straight people. Again, the logic reinforces itself so strongly and convincingly that it is difficult to put it into question.

Put even more strongly, the logic of inequality or superiority makes it difficult even see that difficulty. I have heard many stories of my students trying to explain these problems of conceiving inequality to their parents over the Christmas break. They just don't get it.

Or is it just that they don't want to get it?

Melvin Carter, mayor of St Paul, was recently interviewed by ABC news and had the following profound words to say in response to the continuing protests that are now taking place across the world:

The anger is understandable. In some ways, the anger is the only human response. The question is: what are we going to do with it. . . . In St Paul, we are asking people for peace, but I'm being very clear. We're not asking people for patience and we're definitely not asking people for pacificism. We're asking people to take the fire, take the energy, that nuclear energy that's consumed our country for this past week, and channel it towards not destructing our community, not being destructive toward our local businesses, but we have to destroy our systemic racism. We have to destroy those kinds of inequities in our community. We have to destroy poverty and homelessness. And we have certainly seen that we have to destroy the legal, the technical; we have to destroy the court precedents, and definitely all of those things written into police union contracts that make it so difficult to hold people accountable when black lives are lost wrongfully.

"In some ways, the anger is the only human response." Many of us have had our fill with patience. "Just wait a little longer. Things will get better. Let God intervene in the situation." But some of us have no more patience. We have had our fill of waiting. The little drips of water that have served as 'justice' have left our mouths parched and aching. We can no longer 'believe' that things will get better or that God will intervene. There is a time for everything the writer of Ecclesiastes says. Now is the time for vengeance--for retribution in which the law is that of an eye for an eye. Lex talionis, baby.

Professors at Wheaton College have long had the knee of the administration on their necks. In my particular case, most of the time I was there the knee was that of Stan Jones. Like many people who are not very that smart and in way over their heads, Stan's main weapon was fear. The goal of his 'administration' was to terrorize the lives of faculty members and, to a much lesser extent, those of the staff. The point was to make professors so afraid that we would never want to say anything that might challenge the status quo.

How, you might ask, did we know that? Well, here's a little clue. If you had enough chutzpah to disagree with Stan the Man in a faculty meeting, you would receive a call at home after the faculty meeting--just about the time when you would be arriving home--warning you that, if you ever disagreed with him publicly again, there would be serious consequences. Yes, he really did call people up and threaten them.

That was one of the more obvious ways in which you learned that everything you said was being monitored and any stepping out of line would be punished. Another way I discovered both of these aspects was when I went up for tenure. I was supposed to have an hour-long meeting with the provost (Stan) and the president (Duane Litfin). These were usually miserable little affairs, but they normally lasted just an hour. An hour of being berated and told that you were unworthy of simply being alive--let alone given tenure. However, when I arrived at the meeting, only Stan was there--along with the chair of my department and the dean. It was a meeting to tell me that there would not be a meeting. Because I had [mistakenly] applied for tenure too soon.

Jones asked me why I had applied for tenure. I replied that I had received a memo from his secretary telling me that I should apply for tenure. Stan didn't like that answer, because it was true. It also made him look bad. Later, I discovered that the worst thing one could do to antagonize him was to make him look bad. He then proceeded to tell me that it was too soon for me to go up for tenure, since I had only been teaching at Wheaton for four years, not seven. I found this puzzling and asked him how he had arrived at that number. He told me that was what the college catalogue said. I then had the temerity to suggest to him that perhaps, just maybe, he should look at my file, which documented that I had been teaching there for seven years (the normal number of years for applying for tenure). He didn't like that either.

What I discovered that day was that Stan had a series of possible 'ways' to block me for going up for tenure. He tried one, then the other, then the other. They were all simply lies. Finally, he realized that this wasn't getting him anywhere, so he changed tacts. He told me: "As your friend, Bruce, I would advise you to wait two years to go up for tenure." You can imagine just how overjoyed I was to discover this newfound sense of friendship. Holy Mother of God! Stan was my friend.

If you know anything about mafiosi, you know that they have different methods of getting, shall we say, 'compliance'. Stan had obviously been studying the Godfather, for there's nothing more menacing than a suggestion from a 'friend' that something might not be such a good idea, you know what I mean? It's up there with "your son, what a nice little boy; sad that sometimes bad things happen to children."

I've already alluded to the fact that my Scottish ancestry inclines me toward being tenacious. I tend to be spunky. So you might imagine that I didn't take my new friend's advice. I vividly remember the day we met on a deserted street on campus when I was supposed to tell him whether I was or was not going to take his 'advice'. It was only 9am, but it seemed like twelve noon when I told him that I was going to let my application go ahead. The look on his face was a mixture of sheer disbelief that anyone would dare to go against him and utter hostility. I knew I would pay for such insubordination.

It was then that the interrogations began--a weekly one-on-one meeting with Stan and another weekly one-on-one meeting with the president. The first meeting with Stan began with a seemingly observational statement that clearly was meant as an accusation. "Rumor has it on campus, Bruce, that you're a flaming postmodern relativist." The enormity of this portrait was staggering. First, I was supposed to respond to a rumour. Since I had not heard anything about this supposed rumour, it struck me as the academic equivalent of the patient who says to the psychiatrist "so I have this friend who believes he's a chicken" and then asks advice for his 'friend'. Without missing a beat, I simply said: "well, rumour has it wrong."

But, of course, that prelude put me into a difficult epistemological space: if rumour has decreed that I was a postmodern relativist, how could I be expected to prove otherwise? It's the postmodern version of the liar paradox. A relativist doesn't believe in truth or morality, so how could I provide an answer Stan could trust, since I (by definition) probably was lying? What made the problem worse was that Stan is rather dim-witted and so trying to use a line of reason with him with any degree of complexity was going to be 'iffy'. There was, of course, the further part that I mentioned before: Stan assumed that, regarding whatever the field was, he knew more than the person with the PhD in it.

However, it's the adjective 'flaming' that was most interesting. If you know a little bit about how Hollywood has traditionally depicted gay men, you'll realize that the 'flaming queen' has been a frequent stereotype. I've already noted Jones's 'academic' interest in gays, though I didn't mention the suspicion of most people at Wheaton of his 'Jonesing' for gays. I think the whole point of the ordeal was that he suspected that I was gay and was out to 'investigate'.

I did get tenure. But that was not the end of the story. Stan's knee was still on my neck. And the ordeal to come was going to be worse.

Lest the reader worry, let me be clear: in this post, I do not intend to argue that St Andrews is, like God according to Richard Dawkins, a delusion. In one important sense, St Andrews certainly exists. There is really a town and a university called 'St Andrews'. The delusion is that St Andrews is even remotely a 'real' university. I take that back. I guess if Bob Jones University is a real university, then so is St Andrews. But Bob Jones doesn't pretend to be something it's not.

Take, for example, the seemingly impressive award the university received in 2013 for being the most LGBTQ+ friendly Scottish institution. One interpretation of this award is simple: the other Scottish institutions are so freakin' unfriendly to gays that St Andrews stands as a beacon of light, a shelter of safety in comparison. The other interpretation is that some LGBTQ+ institution really got conned into believing what is patently false. St Andrews is one of the most abusive places for the LGBTQ+ community one could possibly imagine. Among undergraduates, it may seem like they're safe. But anyone who works there knows that St Andrews thrives on covert abuse. Wheaton College, where I once taught, is open about its rejection of gays. St Andrews, however, presents itself as gay-friendly. I so much prefer open xenophobia to covert oppression.

What, you might ask, could I possibly mean by connecting lack of scholarship and hatred of gays? Here's one example. I applied for a position in something called ITIA, which is part of the Faculty of Divinity in St Mary's College (SMC). While that acronym ITIA is close to 'idiot'--and the reality of the people who are part of it is even closer--the letters actually stand for Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts. Despite the apparent encouragement and accolades I received as a visiting scholar, when I actually applied for the position, my application did not land on what people in the UK call the 'long list'--that is, the list of people deemed even vaguely appointable for the job. Why might that be? My qualifications included two major books with major presses--one on music and another on the arts and the church, along with numerous articles on theology and the arts. In total, at that point I had published thirteen books and about 100 articles and book chapters. While I don't know which 'scholars' made it to the long list, the short list included four people, one of whom did not have a doctorate. One colleague (who is now retired, probably as a result of his inability to stomach the oppression and lying of SMC) attended the talks given by the 'candidates' and expressed the view that none were appointable--since they were all so academically weak. One is left wondering whether the views on same-sex partnerships of the two colleagues responsible for determining who was on the 'long list' were irrelevant.

That aside, the person they hired specialises in boredom in Victorian literature, which any self-respecting faculty on the arts and theology clearly needs represented. Since ITIA specialises in awarding degrees to boring theses, the assumptino was they needed a specialist in that field.

Encouraged by colleagues, I lodged a formal complaint (a 'grievance') with the university about this discrimination against me, a gay man. They promptly appointed Emma Buckley of the Classics department. She seemed very nice. However, I do hope she is more competent in her field of classics. Her competence in the field of adjudicating academic bullshit is, alas, not all that good. She wrote up a long report and the issue of being denied consideration for the position because of my sexual orientation was not even addressed--not even addressed. One thing I've come to realize: academics can write a lot of words about absolutely nothing. But Emma has a great future as a politician. She can equivocate with the best of them.

Yet then I had to remind myself that St Andrews has a reputation to uphold: mediocrity forever! That's been their official motto since 1413--Mediocritatem in aeternum. If you think about the other members of ITIA, it only stands to reason that they would want to keep uniformity. Take, for instance, David W. Brown. He wrote a book titled Continental Philosophy and Modern Theology that was published by Blackwell. When he wrote this literary gem, he had some muckety-muck position at Oxford. In his book, he has a discussion of Derrida. Well, actually, he doesn't have a discussion about Derrida. He has a discussion of what other people have said about Derrida. It's not even a very in-depth discussion of what other people have said. You can see why Mr Brown so excells me. My first book was intended as a mere 'introduction', but it had an extended reading of Derrida's actual texts. My bad. I now realize that, to be a true St Andrews scholar, I would need to stay on a level of sheer superficiality. 

I've also come to realize that I simply don't say enough crazy things. I used to attend church with Mr Brown and the stuff he said in the coffee hour was so gnarly--it was like he was on LSD. My favourite bit was his glorification of the rape scene in The Clockwork Orange. Mr Brown thinks the scene is not merely beautiful but sublime. It's probably just my aversion to sexual abuse as a gay man that I somehow can't how there can be anything sublime about someone being raped. This is, no doubt, to a lacuna in my education.

Then there is the Templeton Religion Trust. In its vast wisdom, it has seen fit to award a grant to Judith Wolfe on continental philosophy and theology. I've been pondering what Ms Wolfe might know about Continental philosophy. So far, I haven't come up with anything. She did write a book on Heidegger, but it's just a rehash of other people's work. Her main qualification is as a scholar on C.S. Lewis--yes, the great St C.S. whose profound lack of philosophical understanding was made clear by his shellacking by G.E.M. Anscombe. So being a Lewis 'scholar' is just about right for her.

On the other hand, her husband Brendan has achieved something moumental. Despite having no degree in theology and no PhD, the all-wise people at the John Templeton Foundation have seen fit to award him a £3.41 million grant to oversee the St Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology. Way to go, Brendan! Even more impressive is that Brendan's website lists him as able to supervise doctoral dissertations on a number of subjects. Really cool, eh? Doesn't have a doctorate but is qualified to supervise doctoral students. Still further, the university has appointed him 'Reader'--he was promoted above the Head of School.

Of course, to be very honest, many of the students who come to St Andrews went to Billy Bob's School of the Bible in the United States or equivalent institutions that no one has ever heard of. So, when they arrive at St Andrews, they have hit the bit time! It's old! It has funny little crooked streets! Wow, a real university. Since many come from places where the LGBTQ+ community is just as unwelcome as at St Andrews, they can settle in and not worry about any of that liberal nonsense about sexual orientation equality or other such 'worldly' things of the devil.

The great genius of the University of St Andrews is that it has managed to attract so many students from the United States. These kids are like gold--they pay full price. A student from Scotland pays only a little, a student from England somewhat more (ask Prince William for more details on that), but the Americans pay the big bucks. SMC makes most of its money off of Americans in search of that certain Scottish something. You might even go home with a kilt! What those students do not know is that many of their professors are academic losers. Of course, that's the view from a subaltern queer--What do I know? Probably nothing. Maybe I just don't get the St Andrews Delusion.