"Professors at War:
Searching for Dissent at the MLA"
Scott Jaschik, Boston Globe
"Why are you headed to San Diego?" asked the man next to me on the plane. "I'm going to a meeting of English professors to hear what they have to say about the war with Iraq," I replied.
"English professors? On the war?" The man smirked. "I can't imagine what they would have to say."
Plenty, it turns out. This past week, about 8,000 professors and graduate students gathered here for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Most came for job interviews, to catch up with old friends, and to attend some of the 763 panels of scholars. But among the panels on topics ranging from Hawthorne to Asian cinema to "The Aesthetics of Trash" were a surprising number of sessions dealing with the war in Iraq, terrorism, patriotism, and American foreign policy.