February 11, 2005

Victims and Professionals in Academe

To the Editor:

In What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan Books, 2004), Thomas Frank observes that the strategy of victimization has played a key role in conservative gains in blue-collar states.

William Pilger seems to be applying the same strategy to academe: His conservatism, he says, has made him part of an oppressed minority in higher education ("In but Not of Academe," Careers, December 17). The problem is that Professor