POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN
Responding to the AAUP’s statement opposing Florida’s “viewpoint diversity” legislation, a colleague teaching at a major research university sent me this poem. The would-be poet wishes to remain anonymous; something about preserving dignity. This year marks the 25th annual April celebration of National Poetry Month, so I thought it worth posting. Perhaps others will add their own poetic responses to the ongoing assault on academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in the comments.
Florida, you must be joking
What are you smoking?
Surveillance, loyalty oaths, and fear
Destroy independent thought it is clear
If freedom to think you wish to ensure
The answer is to support tenure
So free up some bucks
Your law really sucks
Florida is thinking, and fighting for free speech
Which is too often suppressed and out of civilized reach
The Left is full of feelings, morals, and what is “right”
But debate, challenge or compromise is not their kind of fight
It’s “all or nothing” for the radicals who demand and yearn
Even if your town must be destroyed and your homes and businesses burn
If Yeats was right and the rough beast has been set free
It won’t defend your rights which are for them, but not thee.
Our nation’s states are divided among the red and the blue
We still have some like Florida, though, that will stand up for what is true
This displeases the warriors for Plato’s pretended justice,
Who see instead only a world of black and white
And this their motto: no peace, no rest, until we take your rights