Doonesbury in the Desert: The Censored Strips
Salem (like Fuller) was out of town when we made our calls. But Salem’s secretary said Tuesday that as far as she knew, the Tribune was the only paper in the country to yank these Doonesburys. Trudeau works about two weeks in advance. “Last year,” said Lux, “he almost really got in trouble when he was taking the Chinese student revolution extremely lightly. He realized almost too late he shouldn’t have been making fun of them, and he pulled a week’s worth of strips and substituted more serious ones.
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“So he’s not always right.”
As with any border area, the phi-math frontier is visited by occasional bursts of gunfire. The most recent volley resounded just days ago in the corridors of the School of the Art Institute. High drama frequently plays itself out in these quarters, sending trustees ducking for cover as paladins from City Hall gallop in to restore dignity and order.
Couzin had in mind a science teacher such as himself. In his ten years at the SAIC, he’s taught Projective Geometry, Set Theory, Topology, Optics, and Color Science. “About this last course,” he wrote, “I was especially careful to make it a science course, since the subject branches into psychology and philosophy and art theory as well. . . . Students bring a rule and calculator to the final exam.”
When Couzin’s letter came our way, we thought we had tumbled onto a major academic debate. Not so, for it has not been joined. No matter how raucously he empties his six-shooter inside the saloon, it seems the boys in the back room refuse to look up.
“Anybody I know in philosophy, at any rate, would not take an open-and-shut view. One can raise the question whether this kind of either/or dichotomization is really necessary.”
