Dartblog

First, what the heck is “Human Science and Services?” If I were unfortunate enough to hold a Ph.D. in it, as interim Dean of the College Sylvia Spears does, I would leave the degree off my resume and live forever in fear of its discovery.

Second, a minute’s googling of this Professor Michael Vocino fellow, whose full-throated endorsement of Dr. Spears may be found below, reveals him to be something of a nut. One student who suffered through a Vocino course ostensibly in political philosophy, writing for the organization Students for Academic Freedom, begins a litany of Vocino abuses with this morsel:

“My name is Michael Vocino and I like dick.”

These were the words spoken by my philosophy professor, Michael Vocino, as he introduced himself to our class the first day of his Political Philosophy course.

In the fall semester of 2003, I enrolled in PSC341, “Political Philosophy: Plato to Machiavelli” as part of my studies to earn my degree in Political Science at the University of Rhode Island. According to the course catalog, this class was about the “Major political philosophies from Plato to Machiavelli and their influence on such key concepts as justice, equality, and political obligation.” But Professor Vocino’s class focused mainly on the professor’s sexual preference and social beliefs and his vendetta against political conservatives and Christians.

To top it all off, when responding to David Horowitz, who featured Professor Vocino in his controversial 2006 book The ProFessors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, Vocino hurled this sizzler: “What Horowitz has said about me that is correct is that I am an out and proud queer who wants to see the U.S. economy based on Marxist principles. […] Everything else David Horowitz has said about me is a not-so-creative mix of fiction, lies, and distortions. He is a man without ethics, morality, and is the Master of the Big Lie.”

Don’t you just love how he capitalizes the Big Lie? Needless to say, anyone this man endorses, including interim Dean of the College Dr. Spears, is someone of whom we should be, to put it charitably, wary.