One of the many ways in which I was massively underprepared
for my twelve year stint as the Graduate Program Director of the UMass doctoral
program in Afro-American Studies was my blindness to the central role of
religion in the American Black community.
Although not a single one of my new colleagues exhibited the slightest
tinge of belief in the divine, half or more of our doctoral students were
seriously religious. One of the young
men, who was married to a preacher, had a message on his answering machine that
blessed you three times before you got to the beep. This failing on my part was brought home to
me one rainy evening in the spring of 2000, four years after the launch of the
program.
I had decided that the complete lack of mention of Marx in
the departmental curriculum required fixing, so I announced a series of
non-credit lectures on Marx, scheduled for the evening in order not to conflict
with our regular courses. Quite a few of
our students turned out for the series.
One evening, we met during a heavy spring thunderstorm, which I ignored
as I plodded through my exposition. At some
point, for reasons I cannot now recall, I remarked as an aside, “Of course,
there is no God.” At that precise
moment, there was an enormous thunderclap.
The next day, one of the students informed me that half of the class was
absolutely convinced this was God’s expression of disapproval of my denial of
Him.
Teaching in that department was a hoot.
2 comments:
If god had really been upset, he would not have missed!
~Long time fan,
Critton
I wish that I was one of the lucky students to hear your lectures on Marx. I'm studying history at a state school and lack of courses on Marxist thought is discouraging.
Yuri
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