"Dyson, and his cohorts such as Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates, bell hooks (that's how she spells it, with lower case letters), George Curry, etc., infest academia with their message of black helplessness. This is why I say that we are in the Marxist laboratory."
I have a female friend, very liberal, who had a class with "bell hooks" -- said that woman is so painfully stupid and ignorant that the class had frequent pauses of disbelief, as students tried to register that PROFESSOR hooks was really that dumb.... and this was in the most politically correct environment possible.
Dyson is a yammering, brain dead windbag, a la Tavis Smiley and Cornel West. bell hooks was featured on C-Span's 3-hour show "In Depth" last year. I thought that show was reserved for writers who are the cream of the crop, but I guess I wuz wrong. They recently featured that moron Thomas Friedman too.
She told a story of how she wanted to kill this white man aboard an airplane because her female friend was sitting in a seat that was already reserved for him. Her friend had to move.
It doesn't surprise me that her class is like your friend described. This woman is a lunatic.