By Jason Livingood

For nearly a decade, Wilfrido Corral, currently a professor of Spanish at California State University-Sacramento, struggled against political correctness in academia.

Corral does recognize that he is imperiling his chance at tenure by speaking out and writing articles such as "Beware the Language Police." "I realize I am taking a risk, but it is an ethical issue with me," Corral explains. "All I am doing is doing what university life should be all about: saying and publishing your ideas."

Corral does the vast majority of his written work in Spanish and has remained much less well known in the United States than in Latin America and Europe. Recently though, many first encountered his work in his English-language review for The Chronicle of Higher Education of the book The Language Police by Diane Ravitch.

"Yes, they pay lip service to diversity and multiculturalism," Corral says of many in the Educational Establishment, "But the fact is that deans and other administrators have to toe the official line, lest they be accused of racism."

For nearly three decades now, Wilfrido Corral has taught Spanish literature at institutions of higher learning including Stanford and the University of California at Davis. He has been, to say the least, prolific in his published work, having to date written seven books as well as dozens of essays, articles, reviews, and pieces of criticism. His forthcoming book, El error del acierto (contra ciertos dogmas latinoamericanistas) [Against Certain Latin Americanist Dogmas], will be another salvo in his efforts.

Given Corral's extensive record of scholarship, and his solid reputation in his field, the Ecuadoran-born scholar's failure to gain tenure is puzzling. "Of course, one would think that such exposure, which universities purportedly want in a scholar, would work in my favor," Corral says, " It has not, basically because it has not been my fortune to work with any deans, at Stanford or Davis, who even know where Ecuador is!"

While some of Corral's colleagues privately expressed to him some agreement on such matters, none spoke out even to just lend him public support. He sees many professors that are afraid to criticize political correctness and challenge the invulnerability to criticism some groups have assumed for themselves for fear that by doing so they might be perceived, or even publicly labeled, racist: "To me it is a police state."

Corral has not always actively campaigned against the onslaught of political correctness. Up until about midway through his time teaching at Stanford (Fall 1988 to Summer 1995), he remained relatively silent on such matters. When he did begin to speak out he did so not because of any single particular incident but rather from the frustration and dismay he had accumulated in his experiences teaching in the increasingly politically correct world of academia.

Many deans of the Spanish Departments in which Corral has worked are no exception. Although they claim the importance of Spanish they rarely publish work in that language. Corral says, "They talk the [progressive] talk, but when it comes down to it, they say, 'Give me something in English.'

One matter that especially appalled Corral was how professors aided and abetted certain minority groups' feelings of victimization and entitlement. Additionally, Corral had numerous graduate students in his classes who believed themselves immune to any and all forms of criticism. Corral even observed some of these students consciously use this perceived status to get away with doing extremely unsatisfactory work.

Corral believes it is because of the fact that he refused to submit to the demands of politically correct thought, and instead sought to hold his students accountable for their academic performance that he was denied tenure at Stanford.

Born and raised in Ecuador, in the mid-1960s, at the age of 13, Corral emmigrated with his family to the United States, settling in Yonkers, New York. Corral would take on English as a second language, and eventually, in 1983, earn his doctorate from Columbia University.

Politically, Corral considers himself an independent, or perhaps, a "liberal in the Latin American sense." A more accurate description may be that he is a true progressive.