National treasure/quirky odd duck Camille Paglia’s back writing for Salon.com after a six-year absence. Here’s a snippet of her first column (you may have to get a trial subscription to read the whole thing).

I am a pro-choice libertarian Democrat whose platform remains the same, above all regarding educational reform. I denounce the outrageous expense, ideological indoctrination and spiritual hollowness of American higher education, with its crazed admissions rat race and juvenile brand-name snobbery. And I call for a valorization of the trades and for national investment in vocational schools to help salvage the disaster zone of urban public education.

Though I am a professed atheist, I have been arguing for 20 years that the study of world religions should be basic to the university core curriculum. I addressed this matter last week in “Religion and the Arts in America,” the 2007 Cornerstone Arts Lecture at Colorado College (it was filmed by C-SPAN). I approached the subject from a different angle in “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s” (Arion, winter 2003).

Though she is no great fan of “New Age” thinking (which I think she finds intellectually lazy), I love what she says about the importance of school kids studying the world’s greatest religious texts. I plan to read her columns closely. She always wakes me up.