When the talk turns to left-wing “woke” ideology on college campuses, I sometimes say I was there at the creation. I basically resigned my first academic job over it. Clearly it was quit or get fired — basically for having the wrong perceived identity and a congenital resistance to moralistic cant.
This was a New England university English department during the ‘70s. Things started off uncomfortably, with a flamboyantly gay administrator making a show of telling people he’d hired me as a “hunk.” To object would be “homophobic,” so I kept quiet.
