60s Needle in Academic Haystack

, Malcolm A. Kline, Leave a comment

Finding a front-page 60s radical four decades after the fact is a bit like finding a needle in an academic haystack: You just have to stumble upon the institution of higher learning that the professional protestor sought shelter in.

Case in point: Mark Rudd of Students for a Democratic Society. We unearthed this pop culture relic thanks to Jonah Goldberg’s invaluable book, Liberal Fascism.

“Today his is a math teacher at a community college in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” Goldberg relates. “Rudd has expressed remorse for his violent youthful activities, but he is still a passionate opponent of American (and Israeli) foreign policy.”

“Many of us forget that the Weather Underground bombing campaign was not a matter of a few isolated incidents,” Goldberg reminds us. “From September 1969 to May 1970, Rudd and his co-revolutionaries on white radical left committed about 250 attacks, or almost one terrorist bombing a day (government estimates put the number much higher).”

Rudd alit at Central New Mexico Community College where, his ratemyprofessor.com ratings indicate, he sticks to teaching math. What should make those concerned about homeland security considerably less secure is Rudd’s guest-lecturing gig, by FBI invitation, at Quantico.

One his web site, he reminisces about an FBI intern from Howard University who impressed him. “After the talk, she introduced herself,” he remembered. “Her interest had been piqued by a comment I made to the effect that the war in Iraq and the current U.S. meddling in the Middle East had an up side, that the U.S. didn’t have the capacity to invade Venezuela and overthrow Hugo Chavez for the horrible crime of sharing the revenue from Venezuela’s oil resources with the poor.”

“She told me that one of her professors at Howard had just come back from a conference in Venezuela and had very positive things to say about that country,” Rudd recalled. “She promised to introduce us, which she did the following week via e-mail.”

Thus, the Sixties Generation not only took over the academy in general but the FBI academy in particular. A look back at the Howard intern’s mentor shows how far we have come, or proves that Darwin was wrong about man evolving into a higher species.

“Rudd, who organized the Columbia ‘rebellion,’ was born to a middle class Jewish family in New Jersey, and his parents hardly encouraged his behavior,” Goldberg writes. “When he called his father to explain that he ‘took a building’ from the president of Columbia University, his father replied, ‘Then give it back to him.’”

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.