Rothbard in our department!); and (3)nI had long had ties with a right-wingnfoundation, and they were expectingnme to bring them some right-wingnmoney (the do-re-mi factor again).nLittle did they know that it was preciselynbecause my ties with right-wingnfoundations had been abruptly severednthat I was trying to get back intonacademia.nThe New Left revolution was prettynmild on our campus; the only left-wingnstudents were the handful of socialnscience majors. The peak was an uglynincident about an attempt to blow upnthe ROTC building, and there werensome anti-Vietnam War resolutionsnpassed by the faculty, but the big fightnwas over a Student Power attempt tonadd two student representatives to thensainted Curriculum Committee. Thenuniversity then had on its faculty onenof the leading Ayn Rand academics,nwho, sounding very much like a characternin Alison Lurie’s The War Betweennthe Tates, got up and made annimpassioned speech to the effect thatnhaving any student reps on the CurriculumnCommittee would spell the endnof Western Civilization, a surrender tonthe barbarians at the gates, and all thenrest. The outcome was very different.nWhen the student reps finally gainednthe inner sanctum of this mighty committee,nand they saw for themselves thenbog of boredom and triviality in whichnthe committee was mired, they quicklynand quite sensibly disappeared, nevernto exercise their “empowerment”nagain.nThe department itself was a litdenmore troublesome. The New Leftistsnamong the Marxists insisted, for a briefnspan, that we teachers should not inflictncontent on the students, that wenshould only “rap about their feelings,”netc. This did not get very far, since thenchairman was a cantankerous oldfashionednMarxist concerned aboutngood cigars and fine wines, who wouldnno more get down and dirty withnhippie students to rap about their feelingsnthan he would join the SS. One ofnmy colleagues was the nation’s outstandingnTrotskyite economist (fornwhat that’s worth), and he was highlyntouted by his acolytes in the departmentnas the “finest mind of our time.”nUnfortunately, the Finest Mind wasnalready in the process of being blownnby hallucinogenic drugs, followed rap­nidly by faux-Buddhism or Hinduism.nThis fellow astonished the distinguishednMarxist Isaac Deutscher at ansocialist scholars’ conference. Expectingnto meet a brilliant American Trotskyite,npoor Deutscher was confrontednby LSD and Hindu gibberish; thisnmight well have contributed to Deutscher’sndeath shortly thereafter. ThenTrotskyite-Hindu shared an office withna female pro-Cuban revolutionary, andnthe smell of incense emerging fromnthat office was matched by side-by-sidenposters of Che with a rifle and thenmulti-armed Hindu goddess. To thensobs of the department, the brilliantnyoung Trotskyite-Hindu didn’t get tenure,nnot having published anything; innlater years he left academia to becomenan itinerant Velikovskyite.nThe female revolutionary was anninteresting case. Coming to the departmentnas a graduate student in politicalnscience, she flounced into her interviewnin a micro-mini (those were thenglorious first days of the mini revolu-nHon), leggy, gorgeous, and’flirtafious.nFor some reason, the males in thendepartment suddenly developed an intenseninterest in their department’snhiring practices. I’m afraid that some ofntheir scholarly acumen was lost in thenprocess. Suffice it to say that sixnmonths or so after she was hired, shenwas swept up in the feminist revolution.nGone for all time were the miniskirtsnand the flirtatious and suggestivenbehavior, to be replaced by grim andnbitter attacks on the evils of oppressivenmaledom. Not only was she an employeenof the Cuban government; shenannounced, when her time for tenurenwas at hand, that she was not going tonfinish her Ph.D., publish in scholarlynjournals, or all the rest of that bourgeoisnclaptrap. Yet the rest of the departmentnindulgenfly recommended her for tenure,nwith the exception of myself, whoncalmly pointed out that since academianwas inextricably linked with such allegednclaptrap, she should, on her ownnterms, be happy to leave such annuncongenial institution. Neither shennor the rest of my beloved colleaguesnappreciated my position, but it turnednout the university was not neady asnindulgent as the department, and thenlady now flourishes as a Cuban employeenoutside the confines of thenhated bourgeois world.nAt any rate. New Left student activ­nnnity on the campus collapsed with Mr.nNixon’s brilliant masterstroke of repealingnthe draft. Suddenly all thenyoung idealists lost their reason fornprotesting the war or much of anythingnelse; and in our engineering university,nwhy would anyone, not fearful of thendraft, linger on as a social sciencenmajor, for heaven’s sake?nIn conclusion, I would submit thatnmuch of the antics of academia isnsystematic and institutional; there is nonreality check. Universities are nonprofitninstitutions, which means they are inefficient,nfor their main source of revenuenis not their students, but donors,nwhether government, corporations, ornbesotted alumni. As a result, responsibilitynand accountability are weak if notnnonexistent, and kooky/petty/dysfunctionalnbehavior is given its head.nMurray N. Rothbard is a professor ofneconomics at the University of LasnVegas and vice president for academicnaffairs at the Ludwig von MisesnInstitute.nLetter FromnEnglandnby Christie DaviesnThe Collapse ofnBritish EnglishnThe English language is in danger. It isnbeing invaded and infiltrated by thenvulgar slang, the horrid jargon, thengrammatical errors and the nasal pronunciationnof the United States. Such isnthe nightmare of those crumbling remnantsnof the British establishment whonstill prize the affected tones of what wasnonce termed the Oxford accent, B.B.C.nEnglish, the public-schools’ drawl. TodaynOxford students tend to sound likenthe provincial chemists they are, thenB.B.C. weather forecasts are given outnby an entertaining Irishman fromnCounty Antrim, and even England’snexpensive elite boarding schools arenmore concerned with examination resultsnthan with ensuring that their pupilsnacquire porcelain vowels and effortlesslynslurred consonants. Even the youngernmembers of the British royal familynhave modified their speech away fromnSEPTEMBER 1991/49n