The opening of the American mind
Subtitle: canons, culture, and history
By: Lawrence W. Levine.
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 212
Subjects: Education, Higher -- United States; United States -- Intellectual life
Description: In recent years there has been a spate of right-wing books attacking the contemporary university. The idea that the university curriculum has been hijacked by radical professors is an article of faith among conservatives and has fueled more than one best-seller. Until now, there has been no forceful, accessible book responding in a comprehensive way for a wide audience.

In The Opening of the American Mind, MacArthur award-winning historian Lawrence W. Levine - whose work Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has called "required reading for everyone interested in American culture and its history" - takes back the debate with a powerful argument about universities, history, and American identity.

Levine shows, first of all, that conservative critics of the university are both systematically wrong and ignorant of history. The canon that they claim is immutable has always been a living thing - shifting with the politics and society of the times. As recently as the late nineteenth century, the very literature the conservatives are nostalgic for was viewed as peripheral; even the president of Yale warned against the perils of studying English or American literature.

The western civilization curriculum sixties liberals are accused of dismantling was out of favor before they ever became professorsand was itself the result of a government program after World War I to ensure that American values were taught in the university, not the result of politically neutral inquiry and consensus.

With rigorous analysis and wonderfully entertaining storytelling, Levine shows that the new multicultural shift in American culture and education is not the result of a plot by a cabal of politically correct radical professors, but a reflection of a dynamic of social change that is uniquely American - and that is to be celebrated. Levine argues that critics' attacks mask deeper fears of a multicultural society - fears that have ties to old anxieties about immigration and a loss of American identity.

Levine defends a positive picture of social change and a new vision of American identity that is inclusive, democratic, and forward-looking.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-201) and index.