If I can plug a fellow NC State grad (who probably posts here -- if you're here John speak up), NCSU didn't have a Perl course, and an undergrad (heck, a sophomore!) stepped up with his elite Perl skills and they let him teach a 1 credit hour class. Great stuff.
I see Perl mostly mocked from OO folks, so reminding them that Perl has OO and showing them to CPAN may help.
I also remember to bring up the phrases "ultimate glue language" and "swiss army chainsaw" as much as possible. Mentioning XS bindings, Inline::C, LWP, and the robot classes can't hurt either. Let them know all the things that Perl can do that their favorite language can't do in a non-trivial away.
I think the academics who like Lisp and other functional languages would be happy with Perl. It's the OO types that need work. Perl proves styles can be mixed -- it's sort of post-modern mixed-media voodoo, and yep, that's threatening to a professor or student unwilling to take the leap and throw away preconceptions.
I don't think Perl needs to become "a better language" by any means. Perl6 will help the OO model, true, but it's rock solid as a language now. Java isn't in Universities due to corporations -- when NCSU switched, Java didn't have huge industry acceptance and app servers weren't that common -- it made a good *teaching* language, because it enforced OO principles and eliminated pointer-manipulation that a lot of weaker students couldn't handle. Perl isn't a good teaching language, hence at the undergrad level, it might be mocked. However, talk with your AI professor about functional concepts and more abstract stuff, and I bet he would be more willing to tolerate Perl than your data structures or CS1/CS2 professors. Also your Operating Systems folks will probably appreciate it since it can fork and manipulate pipes, etc -- just like C. There is a rigid part of university education that enforces OO dogma -- some of it is right, some of it is not -- it is your job to filter it out and extract what you can -- but what is taught to you is not neccessarily gospel.
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That's exactly what I was saying. It's a good language, Perl6 helps out alot. Of course, like any good Perl fan, I read the apocalypses -- every one of them -- exegesis too. And the State of the Onion section discussing Parrot for Brainf***. I liked that part best.
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My own school (a two-year tech college) recently ditched VB in favor of Perl for its Network Specialist program. Where universities are typically houses of intelecutual aditudes (which has its place), tech schools have a "get stuff done" aditude (which also has its place). Perl may make a lot more sense for tech schools, especially for a networking program, which is going to turn out a lot of future administrators, not full-fledged programmers.
OTOH, I can see the argument for Java over Perl in the more intelectual environment of a full university. However, I think Python and Ruby are even better choices.
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