What passes for learning on campus

other body part” they wanted into the waves.

Keeping in mind all this was under the aegis of a credentialed philosophy professor in a modern university, we can see how limited poor Muggeridge’s premonitions were. The professor, Amber Katherine, put a stamp on the service, pontificating that the purpose of the wedding was to bring about a deeper love for the planet through “eco-centric passion and even lust.” It may not be easy being green, but it’s a riot for the lovelorn.

This box of Fruit Loops was funded by several of the university’s organizations and the main sponsor was “a chapter of the Public Policy Institute.” One of the newlyweds, called — how could it be otherwise? — Serenity, expounded on her personal relations with bits of landscape, with wise “safe-sex and sensitivity ” tips, on those times when under the canopy, the moon glimmering, a blossom or a bough brings the erotic juices to near-boil. She insisted on the importance of “gaining consent from the earth” before proceeding with a physical relationship and, walking the talk, told how “back when I would hug trees in Santa Cruz, I would sort of ask the tree if it was OK if I hugged it.” I am woebegone she did not supply the tree’s reply.

Finally, lest should you think Prof. Katherine’s university courses lack the point and rigour of traditional academic undertakings, a few comments from her “ratings page” make it clear eco-philosophy has a rigour compared to which quantum physics is an intellectual relaxant; Hegel and Kant, mere Wodehousian triflers. Noted one student, wearied from the course grind: “You write a full page of words every day!” Another, clearly a post-Wittgensteinian: “I was a vegetarian years ago and her class transformed me into a vegetarian again, after watching a movie.” There’s also this lamentation from a dark night of the philosophyapprentice soul: “Tests are open book, but you will need to have read and highlighted the important stuff to have time to look it up if you don’t know answers.” And, for me, the coup de main: “Wrote a few papers but the movies we had to base them off of were very interesting.”

Should any reader be daring enough or sufficiently masochistic to plunge more expansively into these shallow, morbid waters, read the much-referenced New Yorker piece “The Big Uneasy. What’s Roiling the Liberal Arts Campus?”, which will add to your tears on what passes for learning in some of the prestige universities of the West.

As Wordsworth said of Milton, of Muggeridge we can also pray: Malcolm thou shoulds’t be living at this hour.

Or, may be not.