Dr. J. Budziszewski

And so don't pay much attention to what I'm doing.

On the occasions when they have paid attention, like when I was up for tenure or when I was up for promotion or something like that, there have been problems.

But, you know, most of the time they're just kind of ignoring it.

By the time I was up for tenure, it was a convoluted, complicated process actually, but I won't tell that story.

But, um, but, um, very few of my colleagues even knew that I was no longer a nihilist anymore.

Oh, some, but, but also I have some very strong, devout, uh, Catholic friends who are excellent influences there and, and, and get more people flocking to them than, than me by far.

Um,

uh rob coons in the philosophy department dan bonavak protestant excellent oh wow i didn't realize uh coons was there um uh a very excellent family sociologist who has uh gotten into enormous trouble just for the excellence of his work because it because it breaks the things that that the that the people want to believe yeah mark ragnaros the the uh some really excellent people and i'm privileged to have them as colleagues so i'm not alone and that's one of the other things you know you say how have you survived

There's a matter of survival by being chased out.

There's a matter of survival by they delay you getting tenure, delay you getting promoted.

There's a matter of survival, though, by just being suffocated.

And if you have colleagues, even just a few, even just one, that makes an enormous difference.

In the early days, after I'd come back to faith and I was trying to figure things out again and learn how to think, I didn't know of these colleagues yet, but it was enormously helpful to me

that I found out about them electronically, you know, and you could have correspondences.

You could email people and know that there were people at other institutions who were sane.

And, you know, even in my own department.

Most people are not out and out insane.

What it is is the high ground tends to be occupied by nutty people.

And people will come to you sometimes and say, oh, I know that this is the case, but I would never speak out about that.

I have mixed feelings about that.