My (Unpleasant) Encounter with an Honest-to-God Radical ’60’s Professor Whom I Finally Got to SHUT UP…(Just Say No Deal)

I’ve been getting allergy shots for the past year and during that time have often encountered a retired professor with whom I’ve had some fairly interesting chats. I won’t name him, but he retired from Michigan State University in 1992 after a stint that began in 1966.

In appearance, he is a real throwback. Tall, with long, scraggly white hair down his back, he always wears a vest full of peace sign pins and the like. He is extremely loud and whenever I brought up a topic of conversation, he would launch into a rant. Frankly, I’ve always been polite and have let him talk, but I know that he was indifferent to the fact that other people in the room probably think he is nuts. My observation is that he simply LOVES to hear himself pontificate and show off how SMART he is.

The professor, according to Seekers and Thoughts, “received his master’s degree in political philosophy from Columbia University and his doctorate in early modern intellectual history from the University of Missouri. Under the name of Dick Martin, he taught in the Humanities Department at Michigan State University (1966-1992) where he also aided in the creation of the Whole Works and Contemporary Humanities programs as well as a course on England during the Enlightenment.” His previous book, Towards a History of Consciousness: Space, Time and Death, sells for anything from $80 to over $200…and is obviously geared toward college libraries and the academic crowd.