Don’t get all huffy and puffy. You’re the one who made the indefensible claim. As a “liberally educated” man, you shouldn’t have a problem with my inquiry. What? Is it too politically incorrect for your sensibilities? Just as you thought it was important initially to mention St. Augustine’s race, so I think it is important to be accurate in describing his race now.

“Most portraits of Jesus depict Him as a white man, even though he was Semitic. Europeans like to paint people in their own image, which they obviously did with St Augustine.”

True, but Semitic people look pretty darn white, even though they’re technically not. Also, the fact that Europeans “like to paint people in their own image” makes perfect sense—they understood that people identify with their own kind a lot more than they identify with “others,” so such practices are best seen as a spiritual aid. As a white man, you are practicing a radical, even anti-white, method of propaganda that was originally used to weaken the Faith of the average Christian.

“…which they obviously did with St Augustine.”

No, it’s not obvious to me, since you haven’t even come close to proving your case. It doesn’t look like the liberal arts have served you very well—either that, or you aren’t as liberally educated as you think you are.

I do, however, appreciate the website that you provided. I encourage people to use their racial/ethnic identity to strengthen their faith, and it looks like The National Black Catholic Congress is attempting to do that. Unfortunately (and I would never tell them this unless they asked me directly), they are confusing the terms “African” and “black.”

You said "To compare studying Hitchcock's films (while they were good) to reading and discussing Jane Austen is laughable," which strongly implies that you think more highly of Austen than Hitchcock. The issue isn't whether or not you like Hitchcock, and I never claimed it was; the issue is whether or not you're prepared to pretend that your personal tastes in art can be taken for an objective standard of quality. And of course, they obviously cannot.

"will you deny that Shakespeare is harder to understand and more difficult go get through than Hitchcock?"

What a terrible standard for establishing a cannon. If that's the best you can come up with, then let's dump Shakespeare, Austen AND Hitchcock, and spend our whole lives trying to decipher "Finnegans Wake." Difficulty and unintelligibility are not the best reasons to study anything.

"if you understand Shakespeare, you can understand Hitchcock."

Completely untrue. One can understand Shakespeare without any knowledge of the techniques of film, and then one cannot understand Hitchcock, can they? Film is obviously a different medium, and the medium obviously affects the message. Hence the need for film studies in the first place…

Well, apparently you thought that his race was a concern seeing as you made a point to mention it…

“[H]e was a Berber, so, I suppose one could have an argument as to what constitutes being ‘black’…”

Well, don’t you think that that’s important? What does constitute “black”?
Would you consider Zinedine Zidane black? He’s a Berber. Check out the following website:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-484176/Th…

If you search the internet even just cursorily, you’ll find that the Berbers are not black in the colloquial sense.

This doesn’t even mention the fact that pretty much all traditional pictures of St. Augustine depict him as a whitish-looking old man.

“[H]e was from Africa…”

So are Afrikaners…

“…I don't think I'd be too far off in agreeing with scholars that we could
consider him black…”

What scholars? I figured you would have sourced them to begin with… Also, why would you want to “consider” him black? Either he was, or he wasn’t, and so far you haven’t made much of a case to support your reckless, premature, and “heartwarming” claim. The only reason anyone would want to consider him black is so that politically correct whites can pretend that blacks actually make up a part of the Western Canon. Nice try.

-You

"Because German Studies is no more specialized than the Classics Department (in fact, it is probably less so)."

-Me

I hate to revive an old insult, but it does appear that you are illiterate.

They obviously do no such thing. A brief stroll through the work of the Romantic poets, the traditions of the Catholic church or the annals of American political thought is enough to prove the immense and indispinsible importance of non-Classical folkways in shaping "western" culture. Nothing in history happens in a monocultural vacuum, even if that vacuum is in classical Greece or republican Rome.

"What do Af-Am or Women's studies departments provide?"

Take a class and find out.

"you were factually wrong in your assertion that they were not the product of student revolts."

Quote me from above. Where do I assert this? Did you read the part where I said that particularistic politics (i.e., the student rebellions of the 60's) played a role in the creation of these departments? What I am asserting is the fact that D'Souza's analysis, as you have paraphrased it, is wildly over-simplified. Because if blacks and women are under-represented in the academy, and face resistance from tenured professors and administrators, then they are naturally going to strive for a realm of their own in the academy. (A separation that is, in the long run, unproductive. At the time, however, it proved necessary.) Therefore, to account this merely to angry students and ball-less administrators (a rather unimaginative metaphor on your part, I might add) is simplistic to the point of obvious stupidity. There is a clear historical complexity that you are missing here.

"What do these departments provide that the English department couldn't?"

As I have said, if you were actually reading, I would like to see Af-Am and women's studies absorbed in other fields, because in the long run, in a world where the academic realm is open to all equally, they offer nothing that cannot be offered in the broader categories. They had their time and place in an earlier America, but I think it would be a great service to re-integrate them into broader categories. (Specifically American Studies, English and History.)

As for Hitchcock and Jane Austen, you have once again proven why conservatives are under-represented in the academy. They are too often reactionary Philistines who are prepared to extrapolate a dictum for all of Academia from their own personal prejudices. You don't like Hitchcock as much as Jane Austen? Oh, well that must mean that film is a lesser medium than novels from the turn of the 18th century. A real argument would be nice next time.

Then away with majors all together, is it? Because German Studies is no more specialized than the Classics Department (in fact, it is probably less so). So either we dump History and Classics majors along with all other specializations, or we accept all qualifying specializations on an equal footing.

"They are not intended to merely hand out degrees, but to allow unrestrained inquiry to free man from the dogma of his past."

Yes and yes. But as to the second, it begs the question, why the slavish devotion to the classics?

I’ll agree with you on most of your analysis of first year courses at UNC. I would only part with you on one thing, and that is the fact that the values they try to instill in WMST 101 (and all similar classes) are not contradicted in later courses. In my view, the only reason why those values are not restated in more advanced courses is simply because they are assumed to be held by a person taking a 300-level Women’s Studies course. It’s the same problem I had throughout my time at UNC—everyone assumes you
have the same egalitarian, aren’t-we-all-happy-in-our diversity-and-equality opinions that seemingly everyone else holds. Little did everyone else know (until my senior year)—I didn’t value diversity (not the kind that they valued, anyway) and I was no egalitarian. But because I was a UNC student, I was prejudged as a liberal.

And we all know that you're arguing that film studies is not appropriate. What we don't know is WHY you are arguing that.

I then pointed out the fact that your analogy is inappropriate: not only have I read books by conservatives (and therefore can criticize or defend them with more authority than you can criticize an entire department in which you have taken absolutely no classes), but we are engaged in two totally different activities. This is not about you and I both criticizing different sets of ideas without having first-hand knowledge of their quality. This is about you denying the legitimacy of an entire field of study about which you know absolutely nothing first hand, and probably very little second hand. (On that account, I would never take my most "authoritative" second hand knowledge about the history and content of Christianity from an atheist, as you have done with D'Souza's book on "leftist" education.)

So you have drawn an analogy between different classes of activities, and as a result your analogy does not cohere. If you are going to claim that an entire field of study is illegitimate, the very least you could do was audit a class in that field. Similarly, if you want to draw an analogy, wait until I claim that the act of reading Buckley is illegitimate: that's the time to analogize to my argument.

"4. I'm still curious to see an argument as to why film or communication studies are so integral to the mission of a liberal arts university."

Film is an art form, no less than painting or poetry. If it is integral to the mission of a liberal arts university to study painting and poetry, then it is integral to study film.

"Are these classes part of the "update" of the liberal arts?"

Yes. Pretty self-evidently.

"5. I'm not sure what your anecdotal evidence of your German Studies classes attempt to prove."

It proves that German Studies does not make a mockery of your imagined distinction of "real disciplines." To answer your question, the German Studies department is necessary in the way that any other department is necessary: it allows people to specialize in one field of study and to receive credit for it. If you really think German Studies is a mockery of the history, philosophy and language departments, the least you could do is provide some argument to that effect.