David Clemens

Dave Clemens taught a liberal arts course of English, composition, literature and critical thinking for 46 years at MPC before retiring in June. He brought authors and scholars to speak on campus. And as a conservative, he’s advocated for teachers being armed.

Clemens was engaged not only in academic knowledge, developing and teaching a Great Books program, but also in ideological battlefields. He’s written in the National Reviewthat progressives want college to be free to indoctrinate students. He references Andrew Breitbart’s quote “Politics is downstream from culture” to describe how Damien Hirst’s art installations of dead animals suspended in formaldehyde lead to a “degraded culture.”

He is an academic who has presented papers like “The Literate Painting as Antidote to Psychological Man and the Gravity of Our Own Time.” From 1984-94 he reviewed music videos for Music and Methods magazine, sussing out art references and educational content – “I want my MTV” and all that.

He’s speaking this Sunday about art, politics, education, history and journalism: “I see them as five cars crashed into each other in the middle of an intersection,” he says.

Weekly: What’s your biggest teaching frustration?

Clemens: How poorly prepared students are. They arrive at college not knowing the most basic things about history and culture. One student complained about the U.S. starting WWII by attacking a place called Pearl Harbor. Where do I begin to correct this? And, recently, the turning away from the fine arts, the humanities, the liberal arts.

What’s been one of the biggest rewards?

It has afforded me the possibility of learning so many things, and encountering many interesting people.

What has been the trajectory of the Great Books program around the world and at MPC?

In some places there’s a much higher interest in the wisdom of the past. In China, for example, which had the Cultural Revolution to wipe out the past, today there’s a tremendous interest in learning from the past. In the West, the trajectory has been down: It’s all dead white males marginalizing. Now, at MPC, the trajectory has been upward.

Now that you’ve retired, is someone going to take the baton?

Paola Gilbert. She converted from Catholicism to Islam. She wears the scarf. But she’s an Italian-American and an Army brat. Her ancestry goes back to the Mayflower. I hope she can survive the predatory administration. Did I say that out loud?

Are college degrees still important?

A degree should point backward to some coherent course of study, and it should point forward to what a person can do. Degrees don’t do that now.

You wrote that diversity is an abstraction. What is the value of diversity?

If you pursue diversity, as you should, as far as you can, you arrive at individuals. People are individuals. You should not have the slightest preconceptions about them because of anything cosmetic. You don’t know that individual until you sit down face to face.

What do you think of Betsy DeVos?

I haven’t met her. I think she just did something very, very good, which is to get rid of Title IX. Most of my life I was a rabid supporter of public education. I went to public schools, my children went to public schools. To me they now seem like a wasteland. I am a big supporter of charter schools and homeschooling.

What is a work you abstained from reading in front of your students?

Robinson Jeffers’ poem “The House Dog’s Grave.” When you go to Tor House, there’s the house dog’s grave and they read the poem to you. If you have a pet you cannot hear that without choking up.

What are you going to do next?

The things I didn’t have time to do for the last 46 years. I walk my dog on Carmel Beach every day. I’ve ordered a standing stone from England. It weighs 1,650 pounds. It’s going to be put right in [my] garden. They’re in Wales, England, probably Scotland and Ireland.

What do you do with it?

You stand it there, and look at it.

DAVID CLEMENS speaks 4-6pm Sunday, Oct. 15, at Henry Miller Lab, The Barnyard, Carmel. Free. henrymiller.org.