Conan the Barbarian’s New Job: Teaching English at Trinity College

For college students heading back to class this fall, the start of a new semester of classes generally comes along with the opportunity to learn some of the surprising facts about your teachers before you dig right into the material. For instance, I had a Philosophy prof who had been a champion boxer in the Army during the Vietnam War, and a History teacher who kept his hair long because he did Civil War re-enactments on the weekends. Meanwhile, at the University of Dublin's Trinity College, there's an English professor probably better known for his previous career: Stabbing evil wizards in the face.

That's right: Conan the Barbarian is teaching English at Trinity College.Or at least, that's what the Irish university's website would have you believe with a profile that was up earlier this week, listing off academic accomplishments and the courses he'll be teaching this semester, reflecting his expertise in the areas of ancient religion, dismemberment and early 20th century poetry:

It seems pretty legit to me, but while the profile can still be viewed in its entirety after being archived, it's been removed from the actual website. The only thing that looks amiss here is that I could've sworn that Conan's academic emphasis was on Library Science.

This had led some to claim that the entire thing is a result of the college's website being hacked, with one source even claiming that the official line is that it was "an inside job."

I think that was probably a misunderstanding on the part of the reporter. Of course it's an inside job. I mean, it's not like Conan is going to set up the profile himself -- as much as he's accomplished in the field of literature, on his off days from scaling wizards' towers and wrestling gorillas, computer science continues to elude him. He went through six monitors while trying to set up his Facebook profile, because it kept punching his fist through them when a picture of Thulsa Doom came up as a friend suggestion. See, they both expressed an interest in Stygian Wizardry, although in Conan's case, it was less of a "Like" and more of a "I want to kill this with a sword."

Personally, I think that Professor Conan's removal from the faculty listing was the result of a dispute with his department chair, who denied his request for a sabbatical so that he could wreak terrible vengeance upon the dark sorcerer Thoth-Amon and finish writing his annotated edition of Lady Chatterly's Lover:

The new department chair has granted him all the time off he has requested, as well as granting him tenure.

I imagine his sudden removal from the class schedule has left a lot of students with credit hours to fill, but don't worry: Professor Red Sonja just added an 8 AM Women's Studies course on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Just hurry up and register, the bookstore has severely under-ordered on chainmail bikinis.