My run has been a good one, I think. After 49 columns, about as many unsigned editorials, 10 consecutive terms, and more long days and nights than I can remember, I’m laying down my journalist’s pen to work on my thesis. It’s been palpably enjoyable in a way without substitute to participate in the public debate and to have you pick up the paper and maybe catch my column a few days a month.
But enough talk: A distaste for person-reference in my columns aside, there are end-of-tenure shout-outs to get to.
First and foremost, thanks for reading. Column-writers and opinion-mongers might be important to debate, but there is no public discourse without a public. Some of my readers have dropped me notes, e-mails and occasional incoherent, photocopied, typewriter-written three-page rants-come-manifestoes. Seeing e-mails from smart readers — the sort whose clever or farsighted comments shed new light on a subject, or even demand another glance at a topic otherwise laid in my mind to rest — has been the most rewarding part of opinion writing.
(Those loyal readers of my column — both of them — who will miss my occasional fresh insights — both of them — can spend their now-empty Thursdays browsing the 1,000-some column inches of old Travis columns in the online Emerald archive.)
Second, I am also indebted to many of my co-workers for their suggestions, insights and encouragement. Without them, none of this would be possible.
The most frustrating part of the opinion business is, in my words borrowed from another column, “everyone who has problems distinguishing between the realities of a real world and the sometimes incestuous, self-serving or just plain loopy rhetoric passed off as academic or otherwise intellectually meaningful discourse.” Many people in the community — unfortunately, often loud ones — may have clarity of intentions but not of mind.
But for every person who contorts words like “hate speech” and “patriarchy” into false meanings to advance their agendas, there is someone who wields language instead to amplify truth. For every person who doesn’t think the Bush administration ought to be forthright in its motivations for military action, there is someone to demand transparency. For every person who thinks there should be no American involvement in Iraq, there is someone to remind him or her
of a moral obligation to protect human life when reasonable and possible to do so, and particularly
from the clutches of genocidal dictators. For every person who can’t
distinguish between protected and unprotected speech and so attacks legal expression, there is someone to stand up and defend basic First Amendment rights.
So, thank you to the many rational thinkers in the campus community who have time and again helped make my work worth the effort.
Thanks for reading.

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