But the biggest surprise in the book is how little anyone worried about the state of higher education will find to complain of. Notwithstanding all this, it seems that, whatever the ferment over the canon in America today, it has hardly touched Columbia University. With the exception of Sappho, Simone de Beauvoir, and Virginia Woolf, the courses as Denby experiences them look little different from what they must have been thirty years ago, and the teaching is intelligent, balanced, rigorous, and sympathetic. First, as Denby acknowledges, Columbia University is now one of a dwindling number of institutions that have maintained relatively traditional core curricula in the face of the depredations of multiculturalism, and it offers, therefore, little opportunity of witnessing multiculturalism's worst effects. Second, Denby's characterization of the cultural left's attack on the canon is in an important respect inaccurate.
Similar remarks appear throughout the book.
But this representation of the conservative position is simply a parody, and the insistence of those on the left that all they seek is its overthrow is a kind of Sunday-best version of their critique, invariably wheeled out in all injured innocence when they are under attack. Their real argument is that, because there are no universal norms, standards, or truth, all truth claims are merely covers for the operations of power. To be sure, Denby does, on scattered occasions, seem to realize this. But in not recognizing or connecting with this insight the radical intellectual incoherence of the critique of the canon, Denby makes it seem as if the situation is not so very dire. In this he runs the risk of undermining the very courses he so much loves.