(5 of 5)
A. Cornell had become the central place where black power entered the universities for the first time. There was a weak president eager to be on the good side of a hot new thing, admitting great numbers of black students, no matter what their preparation. Of course, it was very hard on those kids. It was much harder to defend institutions that people saw as bourgeois. People just didn't feel good about them. It was more important to be engaged and committed. At places like Cornell, people just didn't believe in very much any longer. Free discussion was no longer the primary function of the university. Only if blacks and women, Latinos and so on used force were they to have a place in the curriculum. Rationalization became reason.
Q. You say you were labeled a fascist, you resigned from Cornell in protest and were unable to find a job within the U.S. academic community for a long time. If you were not traumatized by these experiences, how did they affect your views on education?
A. I grew up believing in universities as places where everybody, particularly minorities, could be free of the old impediments and everyone had access to all these wonderful things. But I have since come to regard universities as much less reliable allies. My critics see extreme moral indignation. I have much more contempt for the disproportionately great pretensions and claims about their courage and beliefs than any real anger. But I didn't really write the book to settle accounts. My passion comes out of the sense of what's important and the freedom that comes through study and the concern for young persons who are being deprived of all standards outside themselves. But the book is not the brooding account of someone's anger. It's really the memoir of a very happy lifetime.