The Stanford protests are also culturally significant as a pointer to one of the important undercurrents of recent intellectual history.
Some works are better than others because some writers and thinkers are better than others.
D'Souza's rejoinder might seem the commonest of common sense. But common sense has always been a precious commodity. When confronted with such an egregious assault on common sense, it is useful to examine the assumptions that determine how the questions are asked. On the one hand, it is evident that this approach has strategic value. The protest was not really against this or that classic, but the entire idea of a hierarchy.