Dear Dr. Adams:

I am writing this letter in a state of frustration and disenchantment, but also, I believe, in a state of enlightenment.  Friday evening I was preparing for a weekend vacation, and I was trying to decide what reading material I would take with me.  I thought about your book and headed for the nearest bookstore.  Rather than waiting until I was lounging on the beach, I began reading about five minutes outside of Wilmington.  After browsing through the Table of Contents, I could not help but immediately turn to those chapters that most sparked my interest (e.g., ?Smile! You?re On Councilwoman?s Camera?).

I made it through the better portion of the book before I ever checked into my hotel that Saturday afternoon, and I seriously considered canceling my plans to go out that evening so I could finish the book. I understand that you are incredibly busy right now, but I hope that you will find the time to read this attempt to explain how much I appreciated your honest, direct writing, and the effect it has had on my own opinions and views.

I do not know if you were aware of this when I was a student, but I was a self-proclaimed ?Liberal.?  While I was too immature at the time I entered college to have developed my own valid political ideals, I had grown up in a very small, conservative southern town.  Obviously, this had an impact on what I thought I believed.  Upon my arrival at the first university I attended, I began to encounter what I later came to understand were liberals.  At this particular university they are generally found in the form of irregularly-bathed, shoeless Hippies (that includes both professors and students).  The students? liberal arguments were not exactly persuasive to me, but the professors seemed to share what I considered to be radical opinions. 

Bear in mind, this is my first personal contact with Ph.D.s.  I naturally assumed, since these individuals were the most highly educated people I had ever met, and they were chosen by university administrators and faculty to teach me, their ideals must be correct.  For a majority of my college career I was bombarded with liberal ideology, and I was nearly consumed by those ideals until I met my fianc?who convinced me to ?change the channels,? if you will, to watch Fox & Friends rather than Today on NBC.

After about nine months of listening to conservatives in the media, mainly Sean Hannity, I was beginning to question my own political beliefs and ideals.  I was having a sort of ?identity crisis.?  After completing Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel, the crisis was over.  I hesitate to say that I agreed with 100% of what you had to say in your book, but all of your arguments were valid and clear.  Also, it was incredibly refreshing for someone to discuss opinions that so many of us, including myself, share, but do not have courage to express.

I mentioned previously that I have been feeling incredibly frustrated the past few days.  However, I believe angry or enraged might be more appropriate.  It is very clear that liberal biases have overtaken most college and university campuses across our country, and the more I think about that fact and the effects it had on me, the more betrayed I feel.  I was, as many have been and will continue to be, taken advantage of by the university.  Instructors and administrators took advantage of the fact that I was immature and quite impressionable, and they used that to satisfy their own agenda, which was ensuring no student leaves the university as a conservative.  I am also quite upset with myself for being so naive and accepting so many claims and explanations only because of who they were coming from.

I want to briefly make a few more specific comments regarding the content of the book. I laughed uncontrollably, and I literally had tears streaming down my face as I read one professor?s accusations of sexual harassment by ?margin tampering.? I also laughed to the point of crying when a member of the UNCW Board of Trustees accused the police of lizard harassment (by dumping thousands of lizards in her house).  That was probably an incredibly ?insensitive? reaction, but I certainly had a good laugh.  As for Rosa Fuller and her parents, I do not even know what to say.  I wish I had been more aware of these events as they were happening.  I will say that it is probably much easier to make crap ?sound? eloquent, perhaps even convincing, with mommy and daddy serving as your very own personal spell-checkers, editors, etc.  I regret that I did not catch Neal Boortz? reaction to this situation.

Regarding the rape issues you raised in the book, I tend to agree with your ideas.  You might remember that I was a volunteer advocate with the local Rape Crisis Center for a number of years. I decided that it was time to take a break from that work after I began to question my capacity to do my job as I had been instructed to by the center.  As volunteers, we were instructed, during training, that our job was not to determine the honesty of the victims we were called on to assist. Instead, we were to support those victims at all times. Continued...