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Clueless in Academe
Gerald Graff argues that our schools and colleges make the intellectual life seem more opaque, narrowly specialized, and beyond normal learning capacities than it is or needs to be. Left clueless in the academic world, many students view the life of the mind as a secret society for which only an elite few qualify.In a refreshing departure from standard diatribes against academia, Graff shows how academic unintelligibility is unwittingly reinforced not only by academic jargon and obscure writing, but by the disconnection of the curriculum and the failure to exploit the many connections between academia and popular culture. Finally, Graff offers a wealth of practical suggestions for making the culture of ideas and arguments more accessible to students, showing how students can enter the public debates that permeate their lives.
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DEFENDING THE ACADEMY A HISTORIAN ATTEMPTS TO DEFLECT THE CONSERVATIVE ONSLAUGHT IN THE CULTURE WARS
When I left Chicago in 1959 to study American literature at Stanford, one of the attractions of the university was the famous socialist critic, Irving Howe, who had just joined the faculty. What I didn't know was that Howe had been refused a new chair Stanford had established in American studies. It seems the foundation putting up the money wanted an American studies program that would \"combat in a positive and affirmative way the threat of communism, socialism, totalitarianism, collectivism, and other ideologies opposed to our American System of Free Enterprise.\" Though a militant anti-communist, the leftist editor of Dissent clearly would not do. I only just learned of this episode from Lawrence W. Levine's stimulating new book, \"The Opening of the American Mind,\" which contributes a wealth of such instructive information to a debate that has certainly not been noted for historical perspective. Levine's book is a response to Allan Bloom's 1987 best-seller, \"The Closing of the American Mind,\" and the subsequent flood of similar diatribes that have attacked American universities for allegedly surrendering to post-'60s political correctness. Levine convincingly shows that these conservative attacks are a case of the pot calling the kettle red. As for conflicts over the humanities canon, these have erupted regularly since the 19th Century, when a few daring souls first suggested that studying English authors might make more educational sense for American students than being drilled in Greek and Latin grammar and vocabulary. As Levine shows, current denunciation of American universities for allegedly diluting the classics with minority texts and pop culture echo the warnings of 19th Century traditionalists like President James McCosh of Princeton, who predicted that civilization would collapse if Homer and Virgil were displaced by Shakespeare and Milton.
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