WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:39 — 33.0MB)
Colin Allen spoke with Paul Newman, J.D., Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Adjunct Professor of Law at Indiana University. Professor Newman is regarded as the world’s foremost authority on West African the Hausa language. He first went to Nigeria with the Peace Corps in 1961, and has lived, taught, and conducted field research there for almost 50 years. In 2000, he singlehandedly fought IU to change its mandatory retirement policy on grounds of age discrimination and that same year, while still a full-time faculty member, he enrolled in the IU School of Law, being admitted to the bar in 2003. After retiring from the IU Department of Linguistics he worked for 2 years at the University of Michigan, where he was the Senior Copyright Specialist in the university libraries. He has also pursued several cases on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, including the recent suit on behalf of the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign against Bloomington Transit. The interview covers Professor Newman’s experiences in Africa, his views about linguistic theory and the importance of documenting languages that are disappearing, and the challenges and rewards of entering the law profession late in life.
