Susanne Klingenstein's influential work reveals two important subjects: how the philosophy and literature departments of Ivy League colleges in the early twentieth century gradually opened their doors to Jewish men of letters; and how this integration transformed the thinking of these Jewish professors, many of whom had been raised in Orthodox homes.

Klingenstein examines in depth the careers and works of prominent Jewish-American teachers, from Leo Wiener, the Harvard professor with thirty languages at his command, to philosophy professors Harry Wolfson, Horace Kallen, and Morris Cohen, Joel Elias Spingarn, writer-critic Ludwig Lewisohn, and finally Lionel Trilling, who won the hard-fought battle in 1936 to become the first Jewish professor of English and American literature at Columbia University.

Susanne Klingenstein is associate professor of writing and humanistic studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also the author of Enlarging American: The Cultural Work of Jewish Literary Scholars, 1930-1990.