Faulkner & Pynchon in the news

[Peter Petto]

Milosevic Targets Yugoslav Teachers  (AP Online; 12/06/98) 
By MISHA SAVIC Associated Press Writer

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) William Faulkner went first. Then Thomas 
Pynchon and Edgar Allan Poe.

More volumes of American works went into boxes as Srdjan Vujica, the 
professor who taught them at Belgrade University, had to pack and leave after 
he was fired in a continuing government purge of the intelligentsia.
With a heavy heart but "without regret," Vujica emptied his office, as did 
more than two dozen other university teachers fired or forced into early 
retirement in recent weeks by the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan 
Milosevic.

The purge began under a new law enacted quietly over the summer that vastly 
expanded the government's authority over state-run universities.
Milosevic loyalists were appointed deans, and they demanded the teaching 
staff sign new contracts confirming that they accepted new state-imposed rules.
"It was a loyalty oath," Vujica said. "I just couldn't do that. The new law 
is intended as punishment, a way to purge teachers who supported earlier 
protests" against Milosevic.

Milosevic's 10-year rule has always drawn its support from the less 
educated, a large majority in Yugoslavia, where about a third of the nation's 
10 million people are functionally illiterate.

About 20,000 students in Belgrade University's literature, electronics and 
law schools are boycotting classes to protest the teacher firings. But so far 
the anger hasn't produced the large-scale street demonstrations that grew out 
of student protests in late 1996.

"The regime wants to introduce full dictatorship," said a student leader, 
Boris Karajicic. "They are replacing eminent professors with some mediocre,
pro- 
government teachers. It's the limitless desire for power that brings such 
laws."