Paul Von Blum
        African-American Studies

Proving the adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, it would be unfair to label nomadic academic Paul Von Blum a radical without slightly qualifying that opinion.  In the past, Von Blum has aired the reasonable concern that “Too many intellectuals write for miniscule audiences.  Public intellectual expression has been replaced by a narrow and highly specialized academic culture which inhibits broader public discourse.”  Von Blum’s words are a trenchant criticism of UCLA’s pigeonhole academics, who make their life’s work the study of ephemera like radical Chicana lesbians or the anarchist history of Berlin, 1920-1930.

            Along with a strong reputation in the field of African-American art, von Blum has also become something of an expert on singer and radical political activist Paul Robeson.  It’s refreshing, then, to hear Von Blum admit that Robeson, a Soviet sympathizer who received the Stalin Peace Prize from that murderous dictator, was not only “blind” but also “wrong” in refusing to condemn the U.S.S.R. for its manifold crimes against humanity.  This refreshing political moderation casts von Blum in a promising light – a light that is extinguished once you go looking for more of the same centrism and come up empty-handed.  Rather than maverick thinking, von Blum otherwise offers only dogmatic radicalism, a failing that his own students point out repeatedly in publicly posted reviews.

            Having publicly admitted that Robeson put himself on the wrong side of history in accepting the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952, von Blum still rejects this as the possible reason for current college students’ ignorance of Robeson.  Instead, as a June 15, 1998 Los Angeles Times article paraphrased von Blum, this lack of attention is the result of blacklisting by “conservative forces, including those in the U.S. government, [who] so effectively maligned [Robeson] and tried to dim his star.”  Few people today, on either side of the political aisle, would much care whether in the ‘60s or ‘70s, black-hearted conservative operatives were sabotaging Robeson’s good name.  But there’s an even more likely explanation.  How many singers from the ‘30s and ‘40s, of any type, do today’s college students know?  The universal lament of the older generation, throughout time, is that the children of that age do not share their cultural reference points.  For today’s college students, Elvis Presley is ancient history, and the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll acts of the ‘60s and even the ‘70s seem practically quaint.  It was inevitable that Robeson, regardless of whether he was praised or maligned in the ‘50s, was destined to become a historical footnote by the 2000s.

            However, von Blum also blames white America, along with evil conservatives, for Robeson’s undeserved obscurity.  Discussing efforts to honor Robeson with a U.S. postage stamp in the same Times article, von Blum snapped, “They gave one to Tweety Bird, but they did not give one to Paul Robeson.  But Tweety Bird was not black, or red.”  In even more blunt wording, von Blum alleges, “white Americans can’t deal with the fact that a black man excelled in so many fields.” 

            Von Blum, who got his start as a lecturer at Berkeley in 1968, came to UCLA in approximately 1980, and since that time, has roamed across the humanities and social sciences fields, eventually earning the rank of senior lecturer.  His specialty is in African-American art, which he apparently feels qualifies him to be a tribune for the black people of the United States (ergo his many witless comments).  While he has received the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Awards at both UC Berkeley and UCLA, his quest for tenure at Berkeley ended in failure in 1976.  His saga at UCLA is not known, other than the result – no tenure again.

    If his publicly available “scholarship” is any indication, UCLA made a good choice in either denying or never placing von Blum on the tenure track.  His review of the art of Ian White, in the radical title Z Magazine, is just about as hysterical as his conspiracy-drive views of Paul Robeson.  In the review, von Blum bounces dizzyingly around from piece to piece.  For our purposes, the details are not important, only the editorializing von Blum does in between occasional references to the art itself.  For example, from the mere “facial expression” of the African-American subject in one artwork, von Blum divines “the familiar understanding that by virtually every standard – mortality, health, education, employment and income – African American men fare poorly.  The figure’s face suggests the sorrow of knowing young friends who have died or been incarcerated.”  Von Blum’s ‘insights’ are like the one annoying kid who could always quickly see the hidden image in the faddish “Magic Eye” prints of the early ‘90s.  The average observer might just see a sad black child painted on black velvet.  But Paul von Blum sees the entirety of the black experience in that single frown.

Worse yet is that the review goes on like this, and it would be a shame to just walk away before von Blum does.  For example, out of another piece of art (apparently with a rather direct ideological message), von Blum finds a rallying cry for reparations:

“In “I Have A Dream – Reality” (Figure 2), a young African American boy gazes suspiciously at the image of the U.S. capitol in Washington, DC as he comprehends the immense gap between the promises of the government and the far grimmer reality.  The credit card metaphor expresses dramatically what African Americans citizens have known since the Civil War.  Despite some modest if grudging advances, and despite the anti-racist rhetoric of governmental officials for many decades, a truly adequate pay-off for centuries of egregious racism is still forthcoming.  Like his older contemporaries, the boy seeks appropriate compensation, paid at least at the same interest rate that consumers encounter with VISA and American Express.”

            In the review, little is safe from von Blum’s searching gaze.  Von Blum smiles approvingly on a mixed media sculpture entitled “New World Bowl Vet.”  Created as a symbol of the first Iraq war, von Blum praises its denunciation of “the superficial patriotism that dominated American consciousness during the saturation bombing of Iraq.  The artist emphasizes a camouflaged-covered football helmet at the top of the sculpture, sardonically revealing the simplistic win/lose ambiance of most public discourse during the Gulf War.  A closer glimpse, however, shows a human skull beneath the helmet.”  Wow.  It’s tough to decide which is worse – the ham-fisted political symbolism of White’s “art,” or von Blum’s breathless paeans to its alleged genius.

            A final piece in the exhibit emphasizes both White and von Blum’s collective ignorance.  A “Go With The Spirit” acrylic painting “focuses on the Iraqi women victims at the top left.  Virtually ignored by the American mass media, untold thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians perished, the vast majority of whom were hardly zealots defending Saddam Hussein.”  Imagine von Blum’s outrage with the current Iraq war: civilians died there, too.  But there’s something to keep in mind: civilians died by the thousands in “peace-time” too, by direct and indirect order of Saddam Hussein.  It may be difficult for von Blum to believe, but sometimes, when people are going to die either way, the just action is one that puts an end to killing.  And all the acrylic art in the world can’t change that fact.

            Von Blum’s thumbs-up for anti-war art is part and parcel of his virulently anti-war, anti-administration political views.  In a galling bit of political theater, von Blum charged at an anti-war teach-in that the PATRIOT Act was worthy of the “old Soviet Union” and that it was a “major intrusion on our tradition of civil liberties.”  Von Blum urged the public to “mobilize politically to prevent an Orwellian nightmare.”  Von Blum also complained to the Daily Bruin, “We are squandering enormous amounts of money on what I believe to be a preposterous war in Iraq.”  Reliably bringing a non-racial issue back into the fold, von Blum continued, “A disproportionately large number of casualties are young men and women of color.”  But not all was lost, in his view.  Himself a veteran of the anti-war Vietnam generation, von Blum speculated that the war’s supposed disparate impact on racial minorities “may generate a greater antiwar movement, which may also spawn more civil rights activity.”   Activity, von Blum helpfully speculated, that might include political action and “street” action.

            Von Blum is no stranger to what he euphemistically called “street” action, having worked in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1964 for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).  One year later, Watts suffered massive riots – or, as von Blum romantically termed it, an “uprising.”  And despite the current generation having grown up in the “shadow of the Reagan era of greed [and having become]…selfish” (as the Daily Bruin paraphrased his remarks), von Blum coyly noted, “If people think the era of massive violence is over, they better think that over carefully.  If it were to happen in the near future, it would not surprise me.”  You know, because white people are all racists.  And because the public doesn’t love Paul Robeson like von Blum does.  The wages of real and perceived racism, von Blum seems to argue, are riots.

            Lest anyone doubt von Blum’s credentials as a radical, a review of his scholarly and personal political commitments will set you straight.  Von Blum, you see, is a fan of “Resistance Art,” created via “guerrilla tactics” in defiance of “prevailing corporate and governmental dogma.”  In an August 18, 2002 Los Angeles Times survey of this so-called resistance art, von Blum heaps further praise on “young people, primarily of color,” for their use of “public and private walls, alleys, tunnels, and abandoned buildings to offer serious challenges to the existing social reality.”  It all sounds great until you realize…wait a minute…he’s talking about graffiti.  Graffiti as a “serious challenge[] to the existing social reality”?  Given that Von Blum resides in the comfortable Venice-Palms section of the wealthy Westside of Los Angeles, perhaps he doesn’t realize that these “serious challenges” are a serious invitation to general neglect, to crime, and to depressed property values.  Perhaps if he were to go talk to some folks in Watts and Compton, maybe even the black folks he claims to care so deeply about, he’d get an earful about how the public feels about resistance art.

            As someone who seems to perpetually prefer theory over practice (as good a working definition of an academic as any), it’s not surprising to find that von Blum is also a notable supporter of communism, another political cause that might have a fighting chance if it ever worked according to theory.  Von Blum appeared, along with UCLA professor Juan Gomez-Quinones, at the May 25, 2005 release party for “From Ike to Mao and Beyond, My Journey from Mainstream American to Revolutionary Communist,” the memoirs of one Bob Avakian, the current president of the Maoist “Revolutionary Communist Party, U.S.A.” 

            Now wait.  Didn’t Mao kill moviemakers and other artists during one of his fits of madness, in one of those Great Leaps Backward or the Cultural Devolution?  Perhaps that’s why the group goes by the name of Revolutionary Communist Party, U.S.A.  It’s still 100-proof Maoism, but a dash of petty bourgeois accommodation takes the edge off.

While there’s not always a one-to-one correlation between personal radicalism and classroom radicalism, it was certainly not surprising to find that von Blum is as much of a classroom tyrant as his public views would suggest.  Not only is he one of BruinWalk’s most heavily reviewed professors, but the student reviews, whether written by self-admitted liberals or self-evident conservatives, agree on this much: Von Blum is loud, he is liberal, and he is close-minded.  Perhaps the most stinging review comes from one student who stated,

“he is the most closed-minded person I have ever met in my life.  Even though I agree with 90% of his arguments, I would find myself trying to argue against him, just because I found his methods so despicable.  This man cares nothing for students, and only for his own machinations of the way the world should be.  He argues for the most extensive freedoms, yet fervently fights students against developing views that are contrary to his.”

Lest that reviewer be mistaken for someone unique in his views, a further look yields others who were similarly unhappy with von Blum’s teaching.  A second student noted, “other than being male, he's essentially a Professor Prover,” (referring to Jorja Prover, a notoriously foul-mouthed radical and Public Policy undergraduate lecturer).  Von Blum, the student continues, “work[s] the crowd with loud and ‘provocative’ statements, devoid of any intellectual insights.”  Similarly priceless are a number of von Blum’s direct or nearly direct quotes reported by his students.  To wit: calling those who have a religious or moral conviction against homosexuality “homophobes,” deriding conservatives as “weird,” and the national anthem as “stupid.”  Von Blum announced that Charles Lindbergh was a “fascist,” and Ann Coulter a “piece of work,” disclaiming that “I would use more colorful language [about Coulter] but I’ll do that in private.”  President George W. Bush was dismissed as “an example of someone who talks about [sex] a lot more than he does it,” and the Boy Scouts slammed as “homophobic” and “paramilitary,” and as kids “sitting around making knots.”  Another student reports von Blum’s disclaimer “I have these opinions and that’s just the way I am,” while a third recalls his statement from the first day of class: “Feel free to disagree with me but I will only be presenting my personal views on these issues and I will not be giving the counterarguments to anything we’re studying.”

Sometimes the exertions of his shouted lectures and diligent interruption of student viewpoints leads him into logical dead-ends.  One student, while writing an overall positive review, recalled, “On the last day [of class] he went off on this drawing of a middle aged white man, saying how it represents all these evils in the world.  This bothered me, because he is a middle aged white man himself and when I brought this up to him, he had no good answer.  He was negatively stereotyping his own race, although he is so against stereotyping of minorities.”

Head-scratching inconsistency aside, the results of von Blum’s classroom indoctrination are quite clear, with one student reviewer braying, “If you enjoy being docile and do not wish to be exposed to the corrupt ways of our nation or the current education system DO NOT take a class with Von Blum.”  One is left to guess that the student then cranked up his Victrola, put on Paul Robeson’s rendition of “Old Man River,” and did a conga line with von Blum.

Perhaps the worst indicator of von Blum’s classroom radicalism is that student reviews, while helpful in providing details on this academic menace, are not the only source of adverse evidence.  While most UCLA professors, even radicals, keep their syllabi and publicly available materials generic in language and academic focus, von Blum, perhaps in a nothing-to-lose mood after three decades without tenure, has taken to wearing his political heart on his sleeve.  Exhibit 1 is his “African-American Film” class.   According to the syllabus, the assigned films “serve[] as an alternative vision” to the “dramatic disrespect,” and “racial distortions, caricatures, and stereotypes” of the white film establishment.  Films screened include 1970’s blaxploitation classics “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song,” “Shaft,” and “Cotton Comes to Harlem.”  Von Blum also samples more recent, violent fare like Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” and John Singleton’s “Boyz in the Hood.”  And, as noted in greater detail in an earlier Bruin Alumni Association article , “UCLA in Black and White: Radicalism in the African-American Studies Department,” Von Blum’s “African-American Film” also screens (the late) gay black filmmaker Marlon Riggs’ execrable PBS documentary “Tongues Untied.”  An almost indescribable pastiche of spoken-word drum-circle nattering and soft-core gay pornography, it served in 1989 as the catalyst for Senator Jesse Helms’ condemnation of National Endowment for the Arts funding.  Riggs bitterly dismissed the criticism as the work of “white arch-conservatives and religious fundamentalists,” but readily admitted that the work included “words like ‘fuck’…images of two black men tenderly embracing…[and] highly diffused, silhouetted nudity.” 

When you look at von Blum’s teaching and scholarly output, you start to wonder why UCLA keeps him around.  Tick off the various possibilities.  Personal politics – well, those are pretty noxious.  His teaching?  Demonstrable rubbish.  Tenure?  Doesn’t have it.  Is it true, as one student speculates, that after 30 years at UCLA, von Blum has some powerful friends?  Or have the UCLA authorities made some Faustian mental bargain whereby von Blum’s noxious views and teaching style are balanced against the consideration that he at least keeps his students engaged? 

Remember, though, that by all appearances, von Blum keeps his students awake through sheer indignation, half the class participants shaking with rage.  It's true that even this is an accomplishment of sort, given that keeping students awake by any method is a task beyond the ken of a great majority of UCLA professors.  But UCLA is making a poor bargain in employing both the all-star academic who’s a teaching bore, and the dynamic teacher who’s a foul-mouthed academic fraud.  Better that UCLA should aim for a standard above both of those compromises.  Doing that will no doubt involve a little housecleaning; perhaps even disposing of a few old relics that no longer match the new decor.