Presents a conversation that took place at the 2000 annual convention in Baltimore of the College Language Association, an organization founded in 1937 to provide support for English (and later foreign language) scholars at historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), in response both to the special problems that faced HBCUs and…

Discusses some implications of an end-of-the-century "fetishization of merit" in the academy. Considers the concern about the conversion of merit into a class-based fetish that has profound consequences for the development of the next generation of the black professoriat and the role of the historically black colleges and universities in this…

Relates the experiences of a white academic teaching in a black rural state college--a plunge into the world of black experience which shocked the academic. States that everything was different--students' names, their manner of dress, their reaction to the O.J. Simpson verdict. Finds that leaving the ivory tower was not easy, but the job exceeded…