Logging in at a (dis)respectful #19, New Jersey Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka has made Right Wing News’ list of “The Twenty Most Annoying Liberals in the United States for 2002.” This (dis)honor was bestowed in recognition of Baraka and his odious poem “Someone Blew Up America” which perpetuated his perverse anti-Jewish viewpoints (and don’t tell me he’s “Anti-Israel” or “Anti-Zionism” – I got plenty more “poems” from Baraka):

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?

Although I suspect most Americans have not heard of Baraka, I was at Rutgers in 1990 when he was denied tenure for a position in the English Department. (What that position might be escapes me since I don’t think he actually teaches…he seems to just rant all the time.) Most descriptions of Baraka note his tenure rejection, but fail to fill in the background. In 1990, Rutgers was going through a severe budget crisis that necessitated cutbacks and tuition increases. A group called CARE (Campaign for an Affordable Rutgers Education) organized to petition the Board of Governors to hold down tuition costs.

What happened next is a sad tale of liberal self-righteousness gone bonkers. After some initial success organizing students and communicating objectives, CARE quickly morphed into a grab-basket of radical-left causes. Immediately, students who had been focused on a single goal (lower tuition) were grouped in with the protest nuts marching against U.S. policy in El Salvador. Suburban students (who make up the vast majority of the Rutgers population) left CARE in droves, leaving the field open for the radicals who, predictably, occupied the Admissions Hall. While still agitating for lower tuition, the “new” CARE also called for tenure for Amiri Baraka; this was during a time when Rutgers was making it clear that they were extending tenure to nobody due to the budget problems. No matter – Baraka met with the students and constantly inflamed their passions against the (wait for it) racist faculty and administrators at Rutgers.

When he was turned down for tenure, Baraka reverted to his malefic form: “The power of these Ivy League Goebbels can flaunt, dismiss, intimidate and defraud the popular will…We must unmask these powerful Klansmen…their intellectual presence makes a stink across the campus like the corpses of rotting Nazis.” Nice. Eventually Baraka left New Brunswick and (I think) CARE collapsed under the weight of its own incoherence. In any case, I didn’t hear (or notice) either one until I graduated in 1991.